Spirit of the Locket
by feralhand
Summary: A Horde zeppelin transporting an unusual piece of jewelry is intercepted by Alliance privateers, spurring a journey across Kalimdor by those who find their lives bound to the will of the Spirit of the Locket.
1. Chapter 1

**Spirit of the Locket**

_A Horde zeppelin transporting an unusual piece of jewelry is intercepted by Alliance privateers. When the transporter is killed, the unwitting passengers are saddled with the dead man's package. As the true nature of the item is revealed and the reasons behind its contest are made evident, the group finds their lives bound to the will of the spirit of the locket, and on the run from not only familiar enemies but allied forces as well. _**  
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><p>The coastal winds blew even this far inland, even this far up. Judging from the squawking of the goblins, they'd need greater altitude still if the zeppelin was going to clear the Twin Colossals. With the way the Desolace weather was, though, it would be a miracle if the pilot could keep the craft from ending up a pile of splinters in the valley.<p>

Beyond the chatter of the crew and the whir of propellers and fans, the sound of Zandali muttering permeated the shadowy space below deck. That, and the shuffling of hastily turned pages in a book.

"I've seen you somewhere," thrummed one of the trolls, the only male, having been staring for a while at the grey-purple skinned female across the cabin. She had been trying quite hard to engross herself in her reading so as not to have to acknowledge his interest, but now that effort was useless. He sat slouching deeply over his lap, and squinted in the shifting light from the balcony, apparently trying to place her in his memory. Thumbing the side of one tusk thoughtfully, he asked, "you one of Fa's girls?"

"No," she answered, pointedly keeping her nose in her book. "Her son? My husband. My name is Komodo."

He made an appreciative sound, slapped the rich robes covering his knee, and sat back on the old bench that served as passenger seating. "My nephew. Call me Skari. What are you doing, huh, so far from home?"

"There is too much trouble in Orgrimmar these days. La'mok is headed to Sen'jin Village, but he prefers I stay out of Durotar for now." A Darkspear woman was expected to be able to take care of herself, especially in this day and age; and so Komodo placed a hand over her abdomen so that she could illustrate the gravity of her husband's concern.

Quite without warning, another passenger spoke. "There is just as much trouble in Lordaeron." It wasn't as if they had failed to notice her sitting there, on the periphery of the conversation. Any troll would stand out against the drab interior of a zeppelin (and they all did), but this one was harder to miss, covered in curling and jagged, red ink tattoos from scalp to toe as she was. No doubt a meditative shaman, with her eyes closed and her palms up, it had seemed like she was lost in thought until just that moment. She took in a breath, filled her mind with the scent of the timber and grease and salt air that surrounded her, and was indisputably present and awake from then on.

Komodo nodded stiffly. "I'm disembarking when we dock at Gadgetzan. I'm to catch a wyvern and head back here, to Shadowprey Village." Closing her book, she with one hand made a boomeranging gesture toward the flapping canvas curtains hung in the balcony threshold. "Actually, I'm going to study with the Witch Doctor there, so I might be of some use if . . ." There were a number of disasters that could hatch from the sordid caterwauling of Cultists in the streets of Orgrimmar, or the growing unrest in the Horde following Garrosh's rise to Warchief. She chose to say nothing, to let the thought wander those courses on its own.

"Ah, poor La'mok, to marry a woman with dreams of juju," Skari teased. The shaman leaned across the aisle and knocked him on his insolent head, and that put an end to the male's haughty chuckling. Just at that moment, lightning crashed on the Desolace. The bolt came down dangerously close to the zeppelin, and the reverberations of its thunder shook the craft midair. Skari glanced at the shaman, in that split second daring to think it was she that had called down the lightning; but no, the look on her face was enough to say that she didn't squander her relationship with the elements.

Something hard hit the floor. A hammock in one of the bunk rooms swung, its beads rattling against the wall, as it was relieved of its burden. A great figure moved to stoop in the doorway, and the flitting light revealed her scarred, grey-furred body in patches.

Lapsing into Orcish was natural. "Jus' de storm. We still in one piece," the shaman told the tauren. Even with those words to comfort her, the tauren didn't seem to want to go back to the bunk. She stared around the cabin blearily.

"For now." Skari laughed, slow and mirthless. It was the kind of laugh one coughs up when the air is too thick for anything but black comedy.

"I'd rather we go down here den 'n Feralas," uselessly uttered Komodo. From across the cabin, the tauren raised one long arm and pointed at the troll.

"I share that sentiment." A clink of forged cobalt followed this statement. Evidently, the tauren was preparing for the worst possible outcome. She began to dress out in plate armor.

Skari shrugged, hanging his arms over the backrest of the bench. "Now ya gone and upset de cow." With a _thwok_, a throwing knife embedded itself in the wall to the side of the troll's ear. He didn't flinch, but this was more probably due to his missing the threat rather than foolhardy bravery.

The tauren grumbled, "you will show me some measure of respect. My name is Everfierce." She didn't move to retake the knife even after Skari wrenched it from the wooden plank with which it had made friends. Instead, she bent and continued fastening the buckles of her cuisses, and then she reached for her tassets. For being such a war worn looking creature, her armor appeared pristine and fit her as well as any silk tunic. There were no dings or dents, only fresh imprints of a blacksmith's hammer.

"Ya travelin' with armor?" Komodo asked, shifting uneasily in her seat. "Where does dis zeppelin go after it cross de Great Sea?"

"Where most go. De towers at de Undercity," replied Skari offhandedly. He was preoccupied, turning the tauren-crafted throwing knife in his fingers, searching the twisting engravings on its blade for meaning. "Rumor has it de Scourge forces in de plaguelands are breakin' down. De Forsaken be wantin' t' take Andorhal, but den so does ev'rybody else." He paused, leaned forward, and extended the knife to Everfierce who was now apt to take it. Old strike marks—purple scars on blue skin—seemed to cradle the weapon on his palm. The tauren and the troll exchanged a chary look, and after a second she took the hilt and smoothly removed the knife from his possession. "We do what we can." With his hand empty, he snapped his thumb and second finger. An evanescent light of green flame sparked there, and for a moment his skin and robes took on a similar hue, signifying the presence of magical fel armor.

Another quake of thunder ripped through the sky above and around the zeppelin. The relative silence between the lightning crashes wanted for the roar of rain, but things like that didn't happen over the Desolace. Funnels of dust rose from the ground, reaching like the eager fingers of some wicked Old God, to prove just that.

Racket from the deck overhead put something like an end to the conversation in the cabin. Everfierce slung a great axe, and a sword, and a shield over her back in haste and ducked into the ascending staircase. The shaman rose in the warrior's wake, and then the warlock, and the witch doctor-in-training went at last, lest she be left alone and on her own. On the main deck, goblins scrambled this way and that. The whipping winds tested the strength of the cables and canvases, and though everything held, the whole craft whined and groaned with each gust. Not all things were so sturdy. A flustered crow blew down from the sky, into the railing, and managed to cling there against the storm.

"Can't you do something about this, Vo'jau?" Complained one of the crew, apparently already acquainted with the shaman. He and a few other goblins were struggling to pull one of the cables to correct the zeppelin's heading as the wind tried to blow them off course. Without prompting, Everfierce moved to assist them.

"Ya be needin' someone on par wit' Thrall and his teachers t' make an impression here," the shaman yelled.

The deck rolled. It wasn't the storm. It was too much help on the tauren's part. The situation corrected itself as her hooves slid on the waxed planks, leaving her no choice but to release the cable she held. She slammed into the railing, just missing another passenger—a Forsaken Lightslayer, by the look of him. He was truthfully unaffected by the near fateful accident. The goblins drew the lines back, and eventually the zeppelin was stable (more or less) again. And the crow, which had been thrown off in the meantime, found its way back to its perch on the railing.

Vo'jau slammed her palm onto the butt of the mace hanging at her side. The light of a verdant enchantment condensed around the serrated saronite head in the same way a snake would coil. The other passengers saw this, but they did not conceive of her reason for doing it.

Lightning shot across the bow of the zeppelin, and for an instant everything from the mountains in the east to the churning Veiled sea in the west shined bright white. And then, just as suddenly, the Desolace was plunged into an unforgiving darkness. Everfierce felt the warmth of another body shoot passed her long before she had eyes for it. There was the sound of a blade caught in its hilt, and the tearing of leather, the snap of bone, and the blood-curdling scream of a panther.

"Hostile!" hollered one of the goblins as he rushed for his rifle. It was far too late, evidenced by the shriek of the Forsaken caught in the feral druid's violent embrace. Everfierce whirled, her hands confused without a weapon in them, and grabbed for the Forsaken's jerkin. She failed, finding only the chain wound about his neck in her grasp, and its clasp gave under the strain. The panther and the Lightslayer tipped over the rail. Gun barrels followed the pair's plummet and shots were fired, but after they dropped into the dust storm there was nothing left to see.

Skari was part way through a ritual, having drawn a particularly vibrant soul shard from his cache to pay for a demon's assistance, when he heard Komodo cry out. The trouble wasn't hers, though. It was the shaman. She had gone stiff and there were fawn colored fingers wrapped around her chin, hooking around one of her sallow tusks, holding her neck bare to the wavy blade of a sliver dagger. The assailant slit her throat in one hard motion and vanished in an explosion of smoke. All at once it was impossible to tell the troll's tattoos from her blood. A red froth spit from the grievous wound as Vo'jau's chest heaved a panicked breath. Her eyes rolled, her head lolled, and out of the blue a miraculous deluge broke on her head. Rivulets of healing magic traveled her body, hurrying to knit her tattered flesh before she bled to death.

With an open hand, Komodo drew an invisible vertical line before her and muttered the name of the protective Loa and then the Zandali word for _shield_. The magic held against a barrage of throwing stars that sailed over the deck a moment later. A couple of the blades struck the warlock as he struggled with a succubus.

"Wrong minion," criticized Everfierce, smashing a massive hoof on the deck as if to spring anymore hidden opponents into sight. "Muscle, not trickery!"

The warlock struck the butts of his palms together, invoked a ball of fire, and hurled it toward the demoness. "De girl is not one 'a mine," he growled back. The succubus took wing to avoid being burnt, and so Skari quickly resumed his summoning ritual. This time, he completed it. The veil of reality shimmered and a great shadowy demon solidified just in time to block the lash of the succubus' whip with his unflinching, black hands. This left Skari free to clutch his torn shoulder.

"Zulfi'ko." Skari called, able to jest at the worst of times. He beckoned her attention with one limp hand. "Lend me ya mana." His request puzzled Komodo. She was all the more confused and frightened when the male sunk his fingers into his wound. His shoulders racked and his expression contorted with the pain of the self-destructive act. Though he cried out once, the warlock did not seem to consider his suffering as anything of great importance. Komodo whispered a prayer to the healing Loa as Skari's blood became incandescent.

"Ya stand back," was all the warning he gave, and then tongues of green flame leapt at his feet. He bid a circle of roiling fire to form there and then stretch from rail to rail. The blaze cut through the lingering smoke, the curling dust, and the eerie darkness enveloping the zeppelin.

The goblins noticed it first, and then one by one the passengers saw the far-reaching face of one of the Twin Colossals rearing before the craft's nose.

Everfierce had the wind knocked out of her—the clink of claws on plate was loud enough to get that point across to all on board. The druid had swung in from the sky and landed on the tauren's shoulders, and now they danced a dance of weight and gravity. With little choice, the warrior tucked her knee to her stomach and crashed sidelong into the deck. The planks splintered and a crater formed where the tauren's spaulder collided with the wooden floor.

Komodo hurried a spell of shielding for Everfierce before Skari's hellfire could do her much damage. The flames dislodged the panther's jaws, and the druid flung itself overboard again. The foreign succubus disappeared in just as timely a manner.

And then the ties and lines slacked. The tip of the gasbag had begun to crumple against the mountain. The deck dropped several feet unexpectedly, causing a number of crew and passengers to fall. Skari collapsed; and though he'd stopped channeling, fire continued to spread over the deck. He, his voidwalker, and Everfierce were the first to skate toward the railing when the bow hit the crags and the stern fell. Vo'jau, who was still recovering from her near death experience, and Komodo were able to hold on closer to mid-deck, but the incentive for doing so was worsening by the second. Just by the volume of the crack of wood deep in the vessel, the pair of trolls were certain something critical had just given out. The crippled zeppelin swayed and tipped, and within the span of a few taut breaths, the broadside of the craft smashed against the wall of the Colossal. Bodies were pitched from the deck like ash in the wind, and then the gasbag ruptured. The wreck plunged into the jungle.

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><p>Author's Notes:<p>

This is my first Warcraft fic. The vastness of the series' lore is daunting, but I do my best to write everything in accordance with it. As seems to be the trend, I'm employing my roleplaying characters here. Well, I call them that, but the truth is I find very little time in game to be in character with them, so this is my outlet. I've gotten to know way more about them here than on my subscription! I hope y'all like them and this crazy adventure I've constructed for them.

Fun facts!

* The zeppelin - nameless, under the Horde banner, that flies a route I've made up for the story. I apologize on behalf of the story and the MMO for the critical lack of in-flight PVP in game.

* Zulfi' - a Zandali name prefix, according to official type lore sources, that is the derogatory form of Zul', as in a voodoo master, used for female witch doctors.

* Character names - Skari and Komodo do not have typical Zandali names, which are generally one syllable and come with a title or two. Forgive me! Other characters that popup in the story should have fitting names, but I kind of fail at using believable names, so we'll see.


	2. Chapter 2

**Spirit of the Locket**

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><p>All the people of Azeroth seem, by now, to know the battle cry <em>lok'tar ogar<em>. _Victory or death_. It is not an idea born solely by the orcs. In these feudal times, any organization involved in a cause that stretches beyond the borders of its origin must be willing to fight; and they must do so until there is either nothing left to fight for, or no one left to fight for it. Few people today are willing to put their lives on the line for a trivial purpose, and so it goes without saying that when a man goes to arms, he goes to someone's death—his enemy's or his own. Relentlessness is key, especially in a world where a few whispered words will restore the strength of your opponent if you do not have the resolve to bring down that finishing blow in time. And so, there are different words, spoken by other cultures, that express the same meaning. For instance, the elves of the Cenarion Circle say _eranu is karath'ashei. Stay until it is done._

The ferry approached Feathermoon Stronghold to let off a party of four. The gnome didn't seem to notice that the voyage was nearly over as she was absorbed in trying to clean the sooty lenses of her goggles. The human faltered briefly, nearing tripping over her petite compatriot. The half-elf moved as soon as the dock was in stepping distance, but he wasn't the first off the vessel. Out in front was the night elf. Clearly familiar with the fortress city, she headed directly for the local leatherworker and once there heaped her scorched and blistered armor on the counter, along with a tinkling money pouch, for patching.

The leatherworker ran his fingers over the blackened breaks in the pile's topmost piece of armor. "Fel magic," he mumbled. "Staghelm sent you through Burning Blade territory?"

"No," she spoke around her little finger as it was caught between her teeth. Her lambent, silver eyes were focused on something trivial just over the building's threshold. "One of the Horde's." The wild beauty of the woods as they spilled into the fortress city's center became a blur before her, and in her mind she felt the grit of cobalt beneath her claws, the reek of troll blood, the heat of the fire, the sting of the smoke in her lungs as she began to suffocate.

She took in a slow, shallow breath and looked nothing but regretful. "Please, as quickly as you can," she said to the leatherworker.

"As always, Bengal. Elune be with you." He gave her a little bow over the counter but she was already heading out.

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><p>Night was falling over Feralas. The forest was coming to life, and so was the fortress city. From the quiet shadows on the pier, Bengal watched the guard change. Elune smiled in the glinting of the Sentinels' armor as they stood at attention, and marched, and turned in what amounted to a terrifying dance. The patrol would move out into Sardor Isle soon, too.<p>

Soft footfalls touched the pier. Beneath the surface, peaceful fish startled and shot off into the dark sea. He moved so unlike a rogue.

"You paid upfront." The difference in Thalassian and Darnassian was a subtle one, but here, in a city of night elves, the discrepancies became blatant—almost vulgar. The half-elf's tone was modest, though, and so his choice of language was almost pardonable. "Tarien wouldn't take even a copper from me. I told you I'd cover the bill for the repairs."

"If you did all you could, you have no reason to feel responsible, Shy," she said, in Darnassian, over her shoulder.

The half-elf was silent, maybe thoughtful, for a moment. Then, in a most candid manner, he replied, "I did. And I failed."

It was instantly apparent, in the way her lips curled over her teeth and her body tensed, that Bengal took exception to his cynicism. The sagacious veil of the long-lived night elf rippled with the furor of the beast hidden behind it. "It is not failure so long as we do not give up."

The feral hiss in her voice did not daunt him. Shy kept his upright posture and preserved his perspective of his performance, but he wouldn't argue. He nodded and turned his attention to the far away and faintly visible northern shores of the mainland. "Shall I request riding sabers to be prepared for Sonia and Ursula?"

Bengal answered with a small shake of her head. Soundlessly, she rose from her seat on the edge of the pier. "I am going to try to find Rhysiart. If Elune is with us, we'll have wings by morning."

"I don't think you'll find much peace at the inn," Shy mentioned, frowning. "The innkeeper is quite upset at having to accommodate our warlock."

Bengal made a soft noise, acknowledging the issue but refusing to shed too much concern over it. "Tarien permits me use of the loft above his shop. I'll leave it to you to ensure our party isn't kicked off the island."

They parted company without words, without bowing.

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><p>"Maybe we should go diving for sea sponges. Those are pretty scratchy."<p>

"Great! They'll be clean, but I won't be able to see _anything_. Just give me a piece of linen."

Sonia flopped backwards, spilling her flipped brunette curls on the stiff night elfin bed, and reached for her bag on the floor. After searching through its contents briefly, she breathed a whiny sigh and replied, "none! I have silk, though."

For the first time in hours, the gnome's fingers halted their desperate struggle to remove the stuck-on black residue from her headgear. Ursula glared at the ditzy human over the ruined frames, unwilling to dignify Sonia's useless offering with a response. Sonia took the hint after a few seconds and went back to shuffling through her endless supplies.

"Isn't there a mage laundry in Dalaran?" Ursula wondered idly. "I'll probably have to take them there. I reckon only magic will get this junk off."

"I'm magic," Sonia gracelessly announced. There was a brief, new height to the Darnassian talk on the ground floor of the open-air inn.

Ursula rubbed the arc of her nose with the back of two fingers. "Not fel magic," she grumbled.

Sonia waved off the gnome's bias against her craft in much the same way she had been dismissing the condemnation of the night elves since landing at Feathermoon. "Okay, but not all of my spells are demony. For instance!" The warlock produced a healthstone and held it out to the little rogue. Clearly, she was not impressed.

"It's green," Ursula deadpanned.

"So are trees!" Sonia fussed. "Night elves should love me." And then, after a few more seconds, the human squealed, "oh!" and drew a strip of blue-tinted cloth from her bag. "Frostweave?"

Ursula covered her face with her palm. "I'm fine. Stop trying to give me things." At a lower volume—more of a grumble, really—she added, "how'd you even get involved in a Cenarion Circle assignment?"

"Why, because I'm a warlock?" Sonia tapped her index finger to her lips thoughtfully. "I don't know. I have more ties to the Expedition in Outland than the Circle. They hate me in that tunnel!" She laughed brightly. Ursula gave her a lopsided frown. Really, her question was rhetorical and had more to do with acumen, but she decided against clarifying it.

Sonia went on blithely, "I suppose it's because of the intel the Circle received on the passengers aboard the zeppelin, or maybe there's some fel magic involved with this locket we're after." The young woman shrugged it off as if it was of no consequence to her; and, breathing a feminine sigh, she hugged her knees and sat up on the bed. With the wind in her hair and that careless look on her face, she perfectly resembled the sort of girl most at home in a little shop in Stormwind or a quiet farm near Lakeshire—not the sort of person one would expect to be wrapped up in a clandestine quest.

Then again, this was a world of causes raising people beyond their everyday circumstances; a world of people raising causes far above their foundations.

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><p>Author's Notes:<p>

Setting inaccuracies! This chapter suffered from them, a little. I decided the Alliance party would be staying at Feathermoon Stronghold _after _I'd created the cast. I abstained from naming the innkeeper, but in game her name is Shyria. Awkward! Also, in game, the local leatherworking supplier at the fortress is actually a human by the name of Pratt. I've employed a night elf, though, because it was easier to create a believable acquaintance between two night elves.

If it wasn't before, it should be obvious now that this fic takes place pre-Shattering (and post-War against the Lich King.)

* Character names II - Sorry, again! For what it's worth, 'Bengal' is an alias/nickname and not the character's birth name. Other characters in the world readily recognize this. In Azeroth, I assert that 'Bengal' comes off as the diminutive form of 'Bangalash', as in the great tiger king of Stranglethorn Vale, whose name is a reference to royal Bengal tigers in real life. (Hey, I heard you like references, so I put a reference in your reference…)


	3. Chapter 3

**Spirit of the Locket**

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><p><em>Respect. Tenacity. Power.<em> This mantra pounded in Solara Dawncaller's head as he fought through the fresh powder still falling on Winterspring. In the faint red light preceding dawn, the forever white slopes glittered, making the Dark Ranger a conspicuous smudge on the landscape. Nature itself reeled at his presence, illustrated no better than the flight of a doe as soon as she caught sight of the elf's pale, lifeless face. Solara considered for a moment whether or not to draw his bow and strike the doe down as she fled, but he thought better of wasting his quiver on spite. In all likelihood, he'd be needing every last arrow.

At least from a certain angle, the ancient forest adopted the distant smokestacks of Everlook as kin. The twisted metal columns covered with rime and moss pretended the life of boughs, and the dark smoke that occasionally puffed from the tops took the form of a leafy canopy when the wind was still. When Solara cleared the tree line, however, the goblin town's true colors were clear. He rounded the walls silently until he came to the gates and elicited a startled yelp from the guard on duty.

It was true that Dark Rangers were creatures of subtly, but Solara was disturbed by the intensity of the goblin's reaction. He looked as if he'd seen a ghost . . . And while that may not have been a terribly inaccurate description of the Dark Ranger himself, given the circumstances no member of the Steamweedle Cartel should be spooking over the sight of the living dead. More than a fortnight had passed since the Forsaken had begun using Everlook as a stepping stone in the push for Wintersaber Rock, and so those like Solara were a common sight passing through the town.

"At ease, watchman," spoke the elf as he stood awaiting entry through the gate.

After another second or two, the goblin ceased gaping at Solara and grumbled, "ehh, shut up." Without looking the elf in the eye, he waved him into the town.

It wasn't just the guard. As the Dark Ranger made his way through the town, it seemed everyone was on edge. They looked over their shoulders when the wind whistled, and they studied shadows with unwarranted suspicion. The mess hall at the inn was unreasonably quiet, its spaces filled only by the clatter of silverware on dishes and the crunch of past ripe foods.

"The town seems to be under a spell," Solara said to the innkeeper.

"Worried about the battles up north, I betcha," she replied with a disinterested sigh.

"Ludicrous. The last thing the Horde desires is to involve your cartel in our troubles." Somehow, even from a lowly foot soldier, hidden political agenda whispered in those words.

Out of thin air, Solara produced a couple of gold pieces in his black gloved fingers and held them out for the innkeeper's inspection. She took and turned the pieces in her fingers with the intensity and attention to detail one would expect from a goblin. Her hands knew the money was good before her eyes did. She gave the elf a steep, cursory nod. "Could have something to do with Grizzix's haul. Things started going sideways about the time he wandered back into town and set up shop." Mumbling grimly, she added, "I _told _him to stay out of the gorge."

There was little point to stay in the inn. One might debate the point of paying the innkeeper for a tiny, freezing, below-ground room that wouldn't see much use, but the truth of the matter was Solara couldn't loiter around outside for too long without offending the denizens. Everything in Everlook had a price, from a place to stand within the walls to the vast spread of sundries scattered on the rickety carts that lined the path through town.

Most of the knickknacks for sale were rubbish. Solara observed this as he strolled through the peddlers' square. Rabbit's feet on chains, as if anyone would suffer the indignity of hanging them from the hilt of a sword, headdresses of old, brittle Owlfin feathers and Wintersaber teeth necklaces. Pseudo-arcane curios included what was professed to be the eyes and innards of demons preserved in crystal vials, a mail coat of Felhunter quills, Demonic Runes, and siphoned Dark Portal energy. Solara stopped on the high heel of his boot at each shop to glance over the assortment of junk and to see the winter-worn face of the salesman barking the virtue of his goods. None of these goblins were Grizzix.

Solara didn't know who Grizzix was, but he could imagine _where _he was. The path through town became patchy and more snow-covered the further east he went. The number of carts and trolleys along the road dwindled, but there was still at least one every few yards. Eventually, he came to the end of the line. The very last shop was a wagon covered by a purple blanket, and a single lantern hung from the frame of the roof. The light beckoned weakly. The cart appeared untended, even so Solara browsed its wares unabashed. He brushed the tarnished brass body of a pocket watch hanging near the lantern until its dusty face was lit. The characters, over which the hands had long since stopped moving, did not resemble that of the goblin's language, or Common, or any demon scrawl Solara had ever seen.

At just that moment, the beaded curtain closing off the cabin of the wagon was shuffled aside by a pale green hand. Two dull, yellow eyes stared out from the twinkling cascade of acrylic penguins. So, this was Grizzix.

"Dwarvish," the goblin gruffly uttered. Then, he smiled a great, sallow, Cheshire smile. "But what need does an elf have for dwarvish things? For that matter, what use would a Forsaken have for a clock?"

Solara slowly retracted his hand.

Grizzix dipped through the curtain, carefully maintaining a toothy grip on his pipe—which, for the keen-eyed, freely showed its Darnassian origin. The scent of the smoke he breathed, however, was far from natural. "I think you're just the person I've been wanting to meet." In his left hand, he produced a rather delicate looking trinket. As its chain unwound over his gnarled fingers, it revealed itself to be a necklace. With no appreciation for the height at which it was held, its pendant knocked on the wagon's table and added another dent to the pockmarked wood.

Solara wasn't impressed. It was an old thing, neither unique nor enchanted. He was only surprised it had yet to fall apart given its horrid condition. His lambent, rose-colored eyes flitted from the pendant to Grizzix. "Please, put away your juju beads. I'm looking for something of real power, something arcane."

"You sure?" asked the goblin, and he drew the necklace inward, admiring a trait unseen by eyes not his own. He turned his head to glance the elf up and down, and as he did so he twisted his wrist and the chain tumbled down his arm. Like sparks from a stirred fire, motes of green light were sloughed from the pendant. For a brief moment, the air was filled with the scent of old, mystic woods. It was a small, barely noticeable, entirely unconceivable thing. The goblin glanced at the pendant out of the corner of his eye, but he was not as affected as the Dark Ranger.

Solara was possessed by terrible awe. A flash of a life unlived breathed in the magic now swirling over the chain of the necklace.

_Respect. Tenacity. Power._

This was the rein of the magic of his enemies.

Its light pulsated as if in time with a heartbeat … and then faded.

"Shamanism was never my skill, and it doesn't do well as a substitute for druidry…" Grizzix said, and there was room for but one breath between that and the elf's sudden lunge for the necklace. With the prowess of a rogue, the goblin deflected Solara's hand with a small, curved dagger. The ring of the blade against the Dark Ranger's bracer was eaten by the snowy hills. "Ah-ah," the goblin warned, but the elf was already in the midst of notching an arrow aimed at his head. "You'll never make it out of Everlook with that attitude."

A faltering expression is one best described with heaving breaths and heavy swallows easily perceived in spaces of empty action; but the dead didn't breath, didn't swallow, and so Solara did not seem daunted by the threat of consequences for his murderous greed. But he did not let his arrow fly.

"Three thousand gold pieces and we don't have to involve the guards," the goblin offered.

Bow steady, arms taut, there was no movement in Solara save for that of his lips. "That is a ridiculous sum to ask of a Ranger headed to the front lines. You are dreaming."

"Something tells me you won't be headed there without this," chuckled Grizzix.

These tense seconds stretched on like hours until finally Solara had to relent. He let up on his bow and slipped the arrow back into the quiver at his back, and when his hands returned to the table he was holding a small, imbued frostweave pouch. He spilled most of its contents on the table. "I'll arrange for the rest to be flown in by the bank." Instantly, Grizzix produced parchment already marked as an IOU. He counted the gold and subtracted that from the debt, then offered an ink quill to the elf who was more than content to sign to whatever was hidden in the fine print.

Grizzix extended the necklace to be taken, and Solara hesitated. The elf slid a hand carefully under the pendant and lifted the item off the goblin. Only now did Solara notice that the pendant was slit down the side and hinged. It was a locket.

"Hey, hey!" the goblin exclaimed. He quickly collected himself and continued mildly, "don't open it here. I mean, be careful, you could break it. Probably need some special tools. Go find an engineer." His helpful tone was muddied by something dark and selfish. It sounded more like fear than favor. Solara considered the state of Everlook and the weight of the air that hung around the locket, and he ultimately decided to heed the peddler's wishes until he was clear of the town.

The elf's gloved hand closed around the locket. He secreted it away and turned to leave without a farewell, and each the elf and goblin contented in getting the better half of the deal.

* * *

><p>Author's Notes:<p>

I don't really understand High Elfin Rangers. I never played the old RTS games, but according to Warcraft sites like Wowpedia, they had something to do with nature, or nature had something to do with them. (Okay, I don't know a whole lot about High Elves or Blood Elves in general—I was never too interested in them.) I'm working off vague information. Hopefully Solara's motives (and fervor) are believable.


	4. Chapter 4

**Spirit of the Locket**

* * *

><p>There is a shu'halo—tauren—story that talks of the birthplace of clouds. It is said that when An'she, the sun, rushes beyond the horizon and Mu'sha, the moon, heralds the night, all the stars of the cosmos awaken to play and dance across the sky. Those stars who dare come very close to the earth, in their haste, become caught in the tallest trees. When day breaks, An'she's light melts the stars and they drip from the trees to the jungle floor, and eventually they become the clouds, but first they are the morning mists.<p>

It is here, between the verses of an old folktale, on a bed of peat and moss, that Everfierce once again found consciousness. Her vision was clouded and blotted with white lights that started to subside when her thoughts became fluent. Tangles of vines, as well as her heavy plate armor, made awkward her attempt to scrub her eyes. Her arm fell like a deadweight from her forehead to her collar, and there she numbly fingered the fastenings of her chest piece until they came free. Somewhere between sloughing the plate and shaking her daze, the thrum of delicate wings filled the tauren's head.

Flashes of color, like those one would see in the many flowers of Azeroth, flitted in and out of Everfierce's vision. They came and went faster than flight should have allowed. They moved not just through the air, but through _worlds_. One of their many number _blinked_ into being just over Everfierce, and then it landed, its webbed feet carrying its tiny weight over the tauren's gray fur. The creature crooked its lizard head and stared curiously at Everfierce as others of its kin circled nearby, their interest apparently drawn to her left hand.

Now, Everfierce, as her name would suggest, was not one easily intimidated or put into submission, but there was something about these creatures that stilled her warrior's heart. She thought to do nothing more than pull her arm up, turn her hand, and see the chain of the Lightslayer's locket wound around her wrist. Webbed feet climbed her forearm, clung to her loose fist, perched upon her horns, and a dozen little eyes marveled at the trinket.

Then, there was shuffling in the overgrowth. A roiling orb of shadow shot out from the jungle and sailed over Everfierce. It dispersed when it hit the tree whose massive, uncovered roots cradled the tauren. Starbursts snapped all over the area and suddenly all of the inquisitive little creatures were gone. Everfierce alone watched Skari stumble, very unlike a jungle troll, over a mass of ferns toward her. When he got close enough, he leaned heavily on his staff and extended an arm for her to grab. "Dey's worse out here den dose ova'grown mosquitoes. Upsy daisy, we needin' to find de rest."

With an unhappy snort, she took his hand and he pulled her onto her hooves. "Warlock, with so few words you insult entire nations." She turned back to gather her chest piece from the jungle floor. As she reached down, the locket around her wrist clinked against the cobalt plate. "Faerie dragons possess vast power and importance, more so than we mortals could ever understand."

Skari had to tear his robes away from a particularly troublesome sapling before being able to press on. Over his shoulder, he commented, "di'n have you pegged as a scholar."

"My tribe follows the druidic path," Everfierce explained as she scanned the area for her weapons. Miraculous as it was to have not impaled herself on her own blades when she fell to the earth, the warrior half-wished she had if only so she'd know where they'd gone. "I've heard stories about the Emerald Dream and its denizens since I was young."

"I seem t' remember we at arms wit' a druid not too long ago," the troll joked, but his tone was bland and tired. "Dem fey buzzin' about be a bad omen."

Everfierce could not decide whether Skari was right or wrong, but as she gazed around at the sweeping boughs and ancient, towering trees, and the vast canopy far, far above her head, she came to realize that the intentions of faerie dragons were the least of their worries. The wilds of Feralas commanded an ethereal mystique. The jungle felt its age, and showed it, too, in the tracks and old markings of past wanderers. This place had been home to so many diverse peoples, and still served that purpose for gnolls, ogres, elves, tauren, and the dragonkin that guarded the portal in the north. Their life and spirit resonated in empty clearings and breaks in the trees, and so it was hard to ever feel truly alone.

"De road," Skari said, tipping the head of his ornate staff through the knotted, wrist-thick vines that fell all around them. A path in the dirt wide enough for a kodo was visible a few yards away.

Everfierce took a gander but was in no hurry to put the road under her feet. "Maybe not the best place to be."

"An' yet, if any of de crew or de girls live, dey go to it. Dey only chance is heading back north, providin' dey know which way dat is." The way the light streaked in from the thick canopy was really the only indication of the sun's position, but it wasn't foolproof. Even if they got the direction right, it would still be days until they reached Ghost Walker Post in the Desolace, and that was assuming they survived the trek through centaur and Burning Blade territory.

Skari observed Everfierce's reluctant stance with a concerned frown. "De Woodpaw," he concluded with a sigh and let the curtain of vines fall and hide her and him from the road. "And de wolf, de bear, de other toothy-furries." Though none of these things sounded like good company, the tauren's preference was obvious in the pivot of her body. She took point and Skari fell in at a less elegant pace behind her.

They kept off the road but did not let it slip out of earshot. The day slugged on and the jungle became a hothouse that wore at them just as the trying terrain did. The more ground they covered, the worse the thicket looked. Trees grew taller and shadows grew deeper. The pair of them developed a way of communicating with sharp breaths and gestures in response to the mounting worry over strange sounds from some place out there. They would stop, scour all they could see with their eyes, until they at once were certain there were not things sneaking around, wanting to prey upon them.

In one such instance, Everfierce halted and suspended the club of timber she'd taken to carrying with her up in the air at her side, as if she were intending to counter something thrown. Shuffling leaves had inspired her defensive stance, and the noise persisted long past the point at which a possible threat could be dismissed as something benign. Just as the thought of summoning a minion entered the warlock's head, the leafy vines and ferns some thirty yards ahead of him were blown over in the wake of some wild looking thing … something ragged and poked full of twigs … someone … some troll, running; and Skari recognized her to be Komodo about the time she flew, barely looking where she was headed, passed Everfierce.

He caught her in his arms and held her as she hollered not so much words as it was red whirling emotion. It provoked the warlock to pick up his head and look as a shimmering wolf shot out over the route Komodo had just taken. Everfierce ducked her head—the point of her horns was telling—and roared, ready to intercept the beast as it sprinted toward them. Just before the wolf and the tauren collided, however, Komodo's panic broke and she screamed, throwing her hands forward so that a shell of light protected the animal. It dove between the tauren's legs, skidded, and transformed into a somersaulting shaman who unfurled, wide-eyed, and in a sweeping gesture commanded the earth to rise and shield Everfierce. The sight of Vo'jau chilled Everfierce not because she had nearly struck an ally, but …

The warrior whipped around to behold the monstrous gorilla that her companions were already watching thunder out of the jungle toward them. In the next instant, the beast slammed into Everfierce. The deep sound of bones knocking and bodies falling shook the trees around them. The tauren grappled with the ape, the curve of her horn under its jaw barely keeping its terrible fangs away from her neck. Skari let Komodo down easy so that he could pitch a crackling mass of felfire at the warrior's opponent. The shock of the heat dislodged the beast. As soon as her opponent's plan changed from fight to flight, Everfierce instinctively grabbed a fistful of the animal's hair and gouged its throat out on the point of one horn.

Everfierce let the dead weight of the gurgling animal crumple to the ground. Such a river of the gorilla's blood coated the one side of her face and shoulder that she could not tell if its nails or teeth had opened her skin. For good measure, though, Komodo lit her up with healing light, its efficacy evident in the strength of the warrior's posture even as the adrenaline in her system weakened. The unspeakable question of victory at the edge of combat faded into the long drop of the aftermath, and there they all sat, still alive and just realizing it.

"Dey's dead," Komodo cried quietly. "We got out but, de crew, everyone—" She didn't have breath to speak as the images of the wreck they'd climbed out of flew through her mind again.

Skari stooped and Komodo wrapped an arm around his neck and sobbed quietly into his shoulder. He patted her reassuringly, but his eyes were on the shaman. Vo'jau was wiping her brow, cleaning the intricate red designs there of the sheen of sweat and dirt that had built up over her tour of the jungle. She was covered in lashes and her mail was damaged. The same could be said for Skari himself. Their condition altogether was poor, but they were no worse for the wear.

If the curl of her arm was anything to go by, Everfierce missed her shield. Instead of the weight of unyielding saronite, there was only the light-as-a-feather locket dangling from where it was now hung up in the warped metal of her bracer. Carefully, she unwound it.

Vo'jau squinted at the tauren uneasily. "You use nature magic?"

"She a druid," Skari spoke out of turn.

"I was never a druid," Everfierce countered with unnecessary emphasis, insulted by the accusation. "But if that is what this is . . ." She turned the tiny piece of jewelry against her rough palm and picked its latch with her thumbnail. The clasp gave easily, but the hinge had to be coaxed—it resisted for a moment, then flung open wide. A surge of blue-green light burst from the locket's compartment and illuminated the four travelers as it reformed, moving like liquid, and took on a translucent night elfin shape.

His figure was imposing, with brilliant eyes staring from beneath a stern brow, and long hair that fell across his shoulders and down his back like wild rushes. He loomed more than stood as the delicate hibernal robes turned to naught but mist below his waist. Into nothing but open air, his hand reached out, and when he closed his fingers, the end of an ancient staff materialized beside him. Where its end would have landed, the jungle floor bloomed with flowers and reaching vines. "The Shadow's influence wanes." His voice echoed through the layers of the world, whispering the words in a number of languages at once.

Searchingly, the ghostly elf looked upon the face of each member of their party and then surveyed his surroundings. He closed his eyes and seemed to breathe, but in the end whatever it was he was looking for did not seem to be there to find. "We are far from where we need to be."

A severe silence befell them. Everfierce held the locket with an unsteady hand, out from her body, unsure of what to expect of it now.

"Ya be?" Vo'jau asked from where she crouched in a battle pose.

The elf curved to the troll's voice, his body evanescing like smoky starlight and then solidifying, if it could be called that, in a new position that faced her. "Shaman, please rise. It is best we agree to cooperate without tiresome questions and distrust." He gestured slightly with his staff and the mail wrapped troll lifted up off the ground as if she were as heavy as a mote of dust. She came down softly on her own feet, unharmed but thoroughly disturbed. "My name is . . . Was . . . Enivan Blackfeather. I was once a druid of the talon, but that time has long since passed. That locket you hold . . ." and here, in a whorl of light, he turned to speak toward Everfierce, "you will take it to the Stormrage Barrow Dens in the Moonglade."

"Dis locket is de reason de zeppelin was razed, isn't it?" Komodo asked fearfully. She shrugged away from Skari like she had it in her to run.

Skari concurred, saying, "no offense dere, Blackfeather, but now dat we's recovered all we gonna recova' from de crash, I t'ink we betta off hittin' de ole hearthstone. De Moonglade is de last place ya convince me t'go. Dey's people after dat locket we dun wanna be runnin' int'a." No sooner had he pronounced the words, he'd withdrawn the enchanted stone from his cloak. He may have begun to channel the spell, too, if Enivan had not swept the head of his vaporous staff in the warlock's direction.

"You misunderstand me," the elf said, brandishing swirling green magic that put the hearthstone to sleep. "This is not a request. You will take the locket to the Moonglade, and you will do so without aggression against the Cenarion Circle though they may pursue you. Neither you nor I have a choice in this matter. The Forsaken must not possess the locket."

"You're talking to the wrong people," Everfierce said. "We are loyal to the Horde." These words were too heavy for the taut air between the five of them. They fell with the weight of a slain leader. They resounded with the poison of betrayal and the doubt of a successor's victory. "If this locket is meant for the Banchee Queen, it would be treasonous to hold it from her."

The elf was grim and unflinching even as they refused him again. "You have my sincerest sympathies, but I am not in a position to be sensitive to the squabbles of mortal kingdoms. There are far, far worse things in this world than your warchief warranting your execution, and I am willing to visit such things upon you—all of you—if you do not begin your journey to the Moonglade now."

Responding to this threat was not an easy thing to do. Vo'jau was especially stricken as she had been subjected to the druid's power and had at least an inkling of Enivan's capabilities. Skari was perturbed by his hearthstone's lack of response, its enchantment seemingly expired. So, he spoke up, for once without the buoyant tone that lent such terribly flippant connotations to everything that came out of his mouth. "I got a rug. I kin fly it up dere." He was a serious and ready martyr; and although his charity was clear, it was not well received.

"I hold nothing against you," Everfierce said, negotiating the locket's chain around her horns so that she could wear it properly, "but I would not trust this task to a warlock."

The troll wasn't deflated by the tauren's abysmal expectations of his ilk. It irked him and he was steadfast. "Ya wouldn't trust a warlock, huh."

"I agree," the revenant elf said, and that put a stop to whatever quarrel may have occurred. "It is better that you move together. Keep each other in check. Protect each other from those that will hunt you."

"Enivan." Komodo dared to draw attention to herself now though she had spent most of this time trying to appear small and uninteresting, as if it would save her from this treacherous quest. "What d'we do when we reach de Moonglade?"

The elf's image flickered like light on the waves of the ocean. His eyes began to dim and so too did the rest of him, as if the light inside him was going out. "This is the first of three things you must do. I will tell you more when the time is right. Take heart and have faith." He almost seemed to dissolve before becoming a slithering mass of smoke that whirled back into the locket, leaving the four of them to their thoughts.

Vo'jau, for one, was not so absorbed in reflecting on this fateful turn of events to go without noticing the audience of faerie dragons lurking in the trees around them. "We're Barrens bound," she said and looked to Everfierce. "You know de way?"

"Yes," was all Everfierce needed to say. After all, tauren were nomads who had roamed central Kalimdor for ages. She was a natural pathfinder and survivalist. Of course, this fact in regards to her race did not always ring with fortune. It was, on occasion, also an ominous thing. There were those whose skills were sharper than Everfierce's, those who could move through the jungle without stirring its inhabitants, those who knew Feralas better because they lived there.

"Did y' hea dat?" Komodo asked of the group as they began to move through the thick overgrowth. Words were not quite as satisfying as grunts of suspicion because words could give a person away, but amidst the four of them they could hardly discern between noises made by one another and other sounds of unknown origin.

Everfierce picked up her arm in a gesture that commanded the party to hold the current position. The twitch of her ears was the only animation about her for several seconds, but nothing piqued her interest. She bade the party to move with a little wave of her hand, took a step, and in the next instant found herself blindsided and smashed into the dirt by something twice her size.

With a violent jerk, she freed one leg only to have it pinned again a moment later. Her own armor cut her hide as she thrashed against her attacker whose face was only visible to her when his enormous hand gripped her head and slammed the side of it into the ground. From the inside of her skull, she heard the horn crack. She could distinguish his shadow out of the corner of her eye, just as a great weight crashed on her back and knocked the breath from her lungs. His black fur bled into the blotches of darkness that clouded her vision. Grimtotem.

In a haze of lost consciousness, the story about the clouds, about stars melting in the brilliance of the day, flashed in Everfierce's mind, and she wondered . . . if maybe . . . Mu'sha mourned the loss . . .

* * *

><p>Author's Notes:<p>

This became a very Everfierce chapter. She's probably the most thoroughly written character of the Horde party. I try to balance them, and I know Komodo and Vo'jau are getting shafted a lot so far, so I gotta figure that out.

Also, Mu'sha = Elune, since we're talking about druids and night elves (kaldorei, children of the stars), and a quest given by the ghostly Enivan… Enivan's not really a ghost, though, since night elves have only been mortal for about seventeen years. He's… a cloud?

So, here's hoping Elune is with them!


	5. Chapter 5

**Spirit of the Locket**

* * *

><p>The inn was quiet for the night in spite of the nocturnal inclinations of the fortress citizenry. When dawn came, life in the city began to slow and slumber. Apart from the sentries and the ferrymen, there was only one person visible, moving between the buildings and along the grassy paths, as the first rays of light crept over the waves of the sea. Shy went and met the sun as it rose on Feathermoon Stronghold, as it would rise anywhere.<p>

He went to the pier, the only relatively flat and open plain available in the wild, overgrown fortress. Like water, he slid through battle stances and swift, sharp gestures. He practiced his breathing and his balance in the new, shining day. The roaring, warm colors of the sunrise melted against his body, and at times the shafts of sunlight were indeterminable from his strawberry blond hair as it flared with his movements. All of it intrinsically complimented the half-elf's lineage even as the city eschewed him. He was alone in the heart of a dark forest, but at the same time he was part of something undeniably majestic and powerful somewhere far away.

"Your elbows are a little loose." Of course, he still had his team members; and one (Ursula, who shared his profession as a rogue) was bound to notice him from her bedside. She stood on the shore, dressed in loose, minimal clothing suitable to the practice of martial arts, as if it had been her intention to join him. Now, however, she was absorbed in analyzing him.

Shy reactively tightened the position of his arms. "I may have pulled something," he admitted.

"Really? You wield a dagger like that, you're going to get your arm broken." Ursula fell into a stance that was similar. She demonstrated the difference with a forward-and-back jabbing gesture that extended upwards from her hip. "Up is better than straight on, even if you're not holding a blade. What are you aiming for?"

He smirked at her. Oh, it was obvious that they would be aiming for radically different areas on a common target. "Did you not see me yesterday?" It was a modest boast, but a boast nonetheless. Ursula had indeed been onboard the zeppelin, but she was not directly involved in the combat that took place. Surely, though, she must have had a moment before or after sabotaging the machinery to glance his way.

"She didn't die, you know. If you cut them open, _they notice._ Internal damage is preferable, especially if you can inflict it without your victim suspecting anything." She exhaled, slipping out of the stance, and then she stretched and finally got around to pointing vaguely in the direction of the half-elf's arm. "That said, reckon you want a healer to see to that?"

He rolled the back of his shoulder against his hand, wanting to draw a solid conclusion on his conditioning. If it was not to put his own mind at ease, then it was to assure his teammate that he was indeed competent. In favor of positive morale, Shy replied, "if there is a local healer that will see me, I would ask aid of them."

"Head over there," the gnome said, moving her finger's point across the city. "Ask for Sabra Shadowgrove."

Shy nodded. There was an edge of disappointment in his words when he said, "I thought you might introduce me."

Ursula chuckled. "I think I need to stay here and make certain none of the warlock's shadows get too close to the inn. Anyway, I trust Sabra."

"Very well," he said, bowing his head to her.

* * *

><p>The tree toward which Ursula had pointed was not far from the inn, just a hundred yards or so, but in the space of time it took Shy to move from one point to the other, he'd begun to have second thoughts. He was accustomed to the medicinal methods of men and the Church of Holy Light. There was a little priest maiden that always took care of him when he wound up in Stormwind after combat. Healing by the warmth and radiance of the Light differed from that of nature. Druids were . . . were . . . Shy couldn't think of a polite word for <em>savage<em>. It was like comparing a salve of plant pulp on a leaf to a clean, antiseptic soaked bandage. He knew Sonia had a mess of cloth with her. He'd heard the girls prattle on all night. He could probably fashion a pressure wrap that would put this whole issue to bed.

"_Ishnu-ala_," said a terribly sweet voice much too suddenly. Shy started like he hadn't in years. In contemplating returning to the inn, he'd walked right up to the open archway of the healer's tree. As he spun to catch the owner of the voice in his sights, Shy grieved the time he must have been standing there looking like a lost fool.

He felt all the more ridiculous when he put eyes on her. No one should be startled by a face so lovely: bright, gentle eyes and smiling red lips, pale lilac skin and turquoise hair gently falling over her shoulders from where it escaped the tie behind her back. She exuded all the verve of youth and looked, by Shy's standards, no older than himself—but that was a naïve notion. She was his senior by a few centuries judging by the sweeping symbols of ivy emblazoning her cheeks.

Shy immediately ducked forward into a deep bow. It crossed his mind that falling upon a dagger now might be better than enduring this embarrassment. "I beg your pardon," he heard himself say in Darnassian.

"You've done no harm," she replied, the faintest laugh lighting up her words.

Shy reluctantly rose. If this were Stormwind, or even Ironforge, he'd get away with a nod and a parting wave. Here, though, as he struggled for quasi-respect amongst _other_ elves, he felt behaving like that just wouldn't do. It was too late to go back. "I was told to ask for Sabra Shadowgrove."

The night elf surveyed him politely. She kept her smile, looking to be endlessly amused by him. "That is my name."

It took a second or two for Shy to understand, then he dipped stiffly into another bow. "My name is Shy."

Mercifully, she asked, "have you need of a healer, Shy?"

"So I'm told," he sighed as he dragged his head back up. She turned into the hollow space of the tree and bade him to follow. He did so cautiously. "I'm sorry. I mistook you."

"Do you find it strange, my name?"

_Sabra_. Saber cat. His first thought was of his team leader, but it was hard to think of Bengal as a woman. She was _female_ in the way a doe was female, but not a woman. This elf in front of him was not the beast her name made her out to be. "No stranger than you probably find mine."

"A half-elf without a family name is not so strange," Sabra allowed as she slid into a chair partway tucked beneath a table. She rinsed her hands in the basin of sea water in the table, and then she indicated with a glance that Shy could sit if it suited him. "What is it that troubles you?"

The fact that she had to ask caused Shy to pause. He almost considered it a vote of confidence that he was _just fine_. This was why he delayed taking a seat in the long, reclining patient's chair on the other side of the table. "I'm not sure it's anything," he mumbled dismissively. "My back, I suppose."

Shy hadn't even gotten all the words out before Sabra stood up and made a twirling motion with her hand. Obediently, the half-elf turned to face away from her. She approached him with studious eyes and a touch as light as a feather. The soft point of her fingers traced the curve of his spine through his tunic. Shy suddenly felt very badly about wearing concealed daggers and dreaded what would happen if this night elf inadvertently set her hand upon one.

"Relax," Sabra instructed as she slid her palms over the tense muscles of his shoulders. Mentally reproaching himself for being so difficult, Shy obliged. He tried, anyway.

* * *

><p>Sonia whittled the morning away sitting in bed, crouched over an elaborate and ornate jewel crafting kit. Glittering dust from her gem cutting littered the wrinkled sheets and the floor. For as long as she worked undisturbed, she appeared to be a talented craftswoman. When a thunder of weight hit the docks ten yards away, Sonia's hand slipped and gauged an ugly trench in the precious stone. She sighed, disheartened, and flipped her hair so that she could see over the rail of the inn's balcony.<p>

Oh. A hippogryph.

She recognized her team leader's voice downstairs. Sonia didn't speak Darnassian, but she knew the word for _armor_ when she heard it. Giving the wrecked stone in her hand a frown, she decided it was probably time to get her things in order.

Ten minutes had passed by the time Sonia meandered down to the dock. Bengal was in the middle of dressing the hippogryph in silver embellished plate. Ursula helped where she could. So too, in fact, did the beast.

Bengal noticed Sonia after a moment. She didn't halt in her work. Of no one in particular, she demanded, "where is Shy?"

"Getting to know the locals," Ursula quipped.

A soft growl rose in Bengal's chest.

And then a low, masculine voice uttered a long, musical phrase in Darnassian.

"Archdruid Staghelm trusts her," Bengal replied offhandedly, being kind enough to do so in Common, as she secured the hippogryph's faceplate.

It at last occurred to Sonia that the hippogryph was staring at her. It had spoken. Right. They did that. She remembered now. It was also a matter of fact that cats purred and dogs barked. This was only slightly weirder.

"You know how to ride one of these?" Ursula asked.

_Slightly weird_ rapidly graduated to _completely nuts_ in Sonia's head. She had to ride this thing? But it _talked!_ "Is it not like riding a horse?"

"It's not like riding a dreadsteed," Ursula specified. Horses required coaxing and a learned rider. Demons could be commanded without a thought for their attitude or even their welfare. "It's easy. You don't do anything."

"Nothing?" Sonia asked incredulously. The furrow of her brow conveyed only a fraction of her confusion.

The hippogryph's plate armor rattled and his feathers rubbed as he casually shook out his wings. It was very easy for him to capture everyone's attention with a little movement like that. "If you spur me, I will toss you into the sea," the hippogryph said, his voice rumbling through his unmoving beak.

"Oh. Oh, I'll do no such thing, Mister Hippogryph!" she exclaimed.

"Rhysiart," said Bengal, carefully smoothing what feathers were ruffled in the process of dressing the hippogryph. "We'll fly northeast to the Dream Bough. If we haven't found them by then, we'll have to double back. We must make it at least as far as the ruins of Eldre'Thalas by nightfall."

Ursula grunted, half in the effort to throw herself into the hippogryph's saddle and half out of dislike for the plan. "Dire Maul is no place to set camp." She didn't settle once she'd made the climb. Instead, she inched back and over the rear lip of the saddle. She sat with only the saddle blanket between her legs and the hippogryph's back.

"We won't. If the Horde party is headed to Camp Mojache, we can't afford to let them get there." Besides being a heavily fortified camp, Mojache was the gateway into Kalimdor's Horde-held northeastern territories. There was practically nothing but open sky between it and the orc's capital of Orgrimmar.

It was obvious that what Bengal wanted to say next was, 'fly!' but there was a hitch. She spun on her heel with a certain, unmistakable malevolence and set off back into the city at a brisk pace. Sonia watched the night elf go.

"You staying here?" Ursula squeak-yelled.

Sonia whipped around to face the implication. Right. Hippogryph riding. Nothing to it.

* * *

><p>Her party's missing rogue was not difficult to find. Bengal tracked him by scent and thus crossed the threshold of the healer's tree in cat form. Shy was there, half-clothed for the sake of the healer's scrutiny, lying on his stomach on one of the long chairs. He would have slung himself to his feet at Bengal's entrance had not Sabra been blocking his way. As it were, he was more-or-less stuck between a beautiful woman and a man-eating tiger, and he was not enjoying one bit of it.<p>

Sabra was confused by the presence of a battle form druid in her parlor. She stared warily and did not speak.

Bengal shifted. In a brusque manner that did not fit the words, she muttered, "_Elune-Adore_." It could hardly be called a greeting since she failed to bow her head or glance Sabra's way. "We're leaving."

With a gentle nudge, Shy encouraged Sabra to move. It only took a second for him to get to his feet, but by then Bengal had disappeared. He grabbed for his tunic and threw it over his head. When he'd found his way into it, he slipped his hand in the coin pouch at his side. He set a small sum of gold on the table and hurriedly offered her his most sincerest sounding, "thank you," before darting toward the doorway.

"_Ande'thoras-ethil_," she called after him. Shy turned to give her a little bow. He had to hide the smile those words brought to his face. It wasn't that her farewell was endearing—rather, he felt it was a very silly thing to say to a soldier headed to battle. His troubles would not be done with for a while yet.

* * *

><p>The smells of gritted stone, of burnt wood, and of blood were Everfierce's first indications that consciousness, and life, had not left her for good. That didn't make any sense. She did not know the Grimtotem to take captives.<p>

Fearing the worst, Everfierce dared to open her eyes. The lids scratched at the globes they were meant to protect. Her vision was blurry. She found herself face down in the dirt. Rectifying this wasn't going to be possible, she learned, as her hands were bound behind her and tethered to something solid. Pressing her throbbing head into the damp earth, she was able to turn her muzzle out. She snorted to clear her nose of debris and then promptly sucked in the first proper breath of air she'd had in she-didn't-want-to-know how long. Weird, wrong colors blotted up her vision and the weight of her body faded in and out, but she wouldn't lose her grip now. She strained to see the world in the periphery of one eye.

Starlight streamed in from the canopy and fell freely all over the clearing. Pieces of camp _still life_ littered the ground around her: a dying fire still smoking, bowls half-full of food discarded or turned over in the grass, a deformed mace left to cool on an anvil, a kodo saddle sitting up on its end and waiting for repairs. In the distance, dark shadows swirled and slithered like clouds of ink in water. The green of the jungle bled into everything. Light danced in the spaces between the dark figures. Torches? No. Wildfire.

Searing adrenaline brought about a new height to her desire to free herself, to stand, to not die like this. Everfierce lurched and strained to break her bindings, but they held in spite of her. As if to add insult to injury, a crackling ball of fire shot over her and exploded into a flaming wreck a few yards from her.

Wait. A ball of fire?

"SKARI!" she screamed. Her voice tore at her throat as if his name consisted of a handful of knives and not syllables. Everfierce shook and writhed, doing nothing more than cutting into the earth with her hooves and one intact horn. The fire spread, wicking closer to what was fast becoming her deathbed. What an awful thing, to be slain by one of her own faction.

And then someone bounced onto her shoulder. A small someone. A horrible, cackling someone whose little feet singed her bare fur and what remained of her shirt. Everfierce changed her mind. It was a more awful thing to be saved by a demon. Nonetheless, as soon as the imp had torn through the rope that kept her down, Everfierce flailed wildly until she was right-side up. She collapsed twice before she got on her hooves the first time. She got her head up in the air and then darkness slammed down on her head. At least she put a bit of distance between herself and the fire before she blacked out.

Just a few seconds had elapsed. That's what she told herself, over and over, when she came around again. Her body complained about its lack of blood and strength as she dragged herself to her knees. She didn't care. The Grimtotem wouldn't have her as their victim. She was going to tear them all limb from limb for this.

The imp stayed with her, muttering darkly to himself and snarling little 'hurry ups' to her when he wasn't scanning their surroundings. Everfierce did not know if it was a good or bad thing that, somewhere out there, a warlock was fighting without a demon by his side. Either Skari had a very steep advantage, or he was very desperate to see Everfierce loosed.

Suddenly, there were hands upon Everfierce's face. Trollish hands. Komodo was staring down at her. She'd blacked out again. Damn it! The tauren warrior was growing exponentially frustrated with her weakened state. Her anger seemed to alleviate some of the maddening unresponsiveness in her muscles. No, never mind, that was the little witch doctor-almost-in-training's doing.

"Come on," Komodo urged. The sound of her was so much farther away than her body. Everfierce felt as if her ears had been stuffed with cotton balls. A scrub with her hand informed her that it was actually blood deafening her. "Dey can't hold 'em forever." As if on cue, there was a boom of crumbling earth. Komodo craned her neck to glimpse the damage. "Dey just lost dey tank." Indeed, Vo'jau's summoned elemental guardian had succumbed to the Grimtotem and fallen to rubble in the mosh of the war party.

Her strength returning, Everfierce found her hooves again; and at last she noticed that their cloven points had been gouged out. Walking was going to be a problem. Komodo noticed this as Everfierce did, although it did not trouble her as much. With a waving gesture and a muttered word, Komodo cast a spell of levitation that lifted Everfierce into the air. Then, the troll took one of the tauren's hands in her own and began to pull at her. Everfierce tugged away as they passed the tepee with the anvil in front. There, just inside the threshold, was a great axe abandoned in the sand. As she swung through the air to get at its pommel, she noticed the shattered fragments of her chest plate on the floor nearby. She would grieve for it later; and for now she would be thankful for the pieces of her armor the Grimtotem hadn't bothered to strip off her. She grabbed the axe and rejoined Komodo who was waiting outside the tent and shouting at her.

Everfierce could see Vo'jau in wolfen form at the edge of the camp. The shaman was faster than the mass of Grimtotem warriors chasing her. She turned tightly, leading her foes as one would pull a kite through the air. As they banked left, an enormous ball of shadow crashed down on them, sending some flying and others straight into the ground. Up above, a flying carpet hovered just under the canopy, its underside peppered with holes and impaled with arrows.

The carpet dipped, probably without Skari meaning for it to, when he saw Everfierce waving her axe in the air at him, flagging him down. She wanted him to come and get Komodo, and he was much obliged to do so. Changing his footing accordingly, he willed the carpet to dive. He made it about halfway before being intercepted. A half-elf landed just behind him on the carpet and grabbed him around his shoulders, just as he had done to Vo'jau not too long ago. An armored crow—Bengal—screeched and sailed overhead, plunging down in a wild spiral toward the maimed Everfierce and the helpless Komodo. Skari couldn't do anything for them. He managed to get one arm inside of the half-elf assassin's chokehold, though. Thank goodness for small victories.

Shy's left-hand dagger was wrenched from him before he knew what was happening. At the very same time, the floor dropped out beneath him. The carpet sank like a stone, taking him and the troll down toward the jungle floor seemingly without preference for either of their lives. The half-elf panicked mid-air and buried his remaining blade in his opponent's shoulder. The spray of blood blinded Shy and the troll's shriek of pain deafened him. The carpet tried to stop but the warlock wasn't quite cognizant enough anymore to control the thing. Only parts of it stiffened up to bear the weight of its riders, and then one corner twisted inward and the whole thing began to spin.

Bengal tucked her wings and let gravity have her. With a heavy _thunk_, she collided with Everfierce at terminal velocity, all teeth and claws, all over again. If the fire was just a few yards closer, it would be exactly like the last time they'd danced this dance. Let it come. It had helped her find them, and it would help her kill them.

Everfierce flew backward from the impact. She couldn't have swung fast enough to hit the druid on the way down, but damn it all if she was going to let go of that axe again! They landed, the cat with her claws hooked into the tauren's leg guards, with a _thump_ and a _crack_ in the wreckage of a Grimtotem tent. It knocked the wind out of Everfierce, but she did not lose grip of her weapon. The head of it was snagged in the canvas, so she smashed the butt of it into the cat's skull. She had to do it twice more before it showed any affect on the druid. Bengal's body sagged, but rather than collapsing, she leapt out of reach. She landed, swirling with verdant green power, as a bear; and then she sank her teeth into the broken timber frame of the tent and ripped it out from under Everfierce. The tauren's axe jerked out of her hand and sailed away with the canvas.

Shy bailed off the carpet before it hit the ground. Tucking and rolling did him only a small measure of good. He knew, by the white hot pain that shot through him when he hit the ground, that he'd done something awful to his right side. If he was lucky, he'd just dislocated his shoulder. No time to check now.

Skari crash-landed some ten yards away, closer than Shy to Komodo. The half-elf immediately got to his feet, trying and failing to ignore the screams of his nervous system to stop. He clutched his right arm to his side and sprinted for the healer. Close. Closer! She put a shield up around herself, but Shy didn't care. At the last second, he forced himself to let go of his aching arm. He tackled the white-haired troll woman to the ground. As they hit, he slammed his elbow into her chest. "Stay down!" he yelled in triumph.

It was about that time he realized that his limp right hand had dropped his second dagger somewhere. He still had throwing stars. Instantly, one of the deadly stars was in his hand and against the troll woman's throat. Her shield glimmered, its light fading as it struggled to withstand him. He was sure it was nearly broken, nearly there . . . and then something hard punched him in the side, just under his left arm. He was expecting it to be a stick she'd gotten hold of, but no—what he saw, when he twisted his head, was the burning shaft of an arrow embedded in his cuirass. He gasped, the air like fire in his lungs, and rolled off his victim. _They have a hunter? Where? Why did no one tell me?_

It wasn't the Horde. It was the Grimtotem. They were taking back their ruined and fiery camp. The sovereign Cenarion cause abruptly transformed into a tumult of four versus four versus fifty and counting. Sonia was trying to hold them off, to keep them out of the way until her party had accomplished what it had come to do, but the odds were mounting. Rhysiart shot through the air like a bullet, coming so low that Shy thought he might be ripped to pieces by the beast's talons. As the hippogryph passed, Ursula leapt off of it and onto the ground; and Rhysiart snatched Komodo.

"You'll live," the gnome woman muttered at Shy. It was like she thought he was lying on his back in the middle of a war zone just to annoy her. Customarily, one soldier would give the other a hand in standing, but that simply wasn't practical given the height of a gnome. Instead, she kicked him in the shin and then took off across the clearing.

A mountain of Grimtotem enveloped Bengal's bear form. As soon as she knocked one out of the way, two more took its place. She roared, and at the very same moment a cloud of dust burst under her feet. A flash and a bang followed. Bengal lost track of what was up and what was down, as did all the Grimtotem around her. Regardless, this was likely going to be her last opportunity to get out of being torn apart by tauren berserkers, so she shifted into a bird and leapt.

By the grace of the gray tint of her fur, the Grimtotem seemed to have forgotten Everfierce. She didn't blend in with them, but she certainly did not stick out as much as the others. For a few precious moments, she found herself free of opponents. She stumbled, having lost the great favor that was levitation, toward where she had seen Skari drop. She was just in time to plant the head of her axe in the back of the neck of a Grimtotem who was primed to squash the life out of the downed warlock.

"Skari," Everfierce hissed as she yanked her axe out of the Grimtotem corpse's spine. It took a few tugs, mostly because she couldn't brace her hoof on him and stand properly. "Don't tell me you have given up already."

Giving up was not what he was doing. Skari was glass-eyed, staring up into the jungle canopy, and unmoving. A great deal of his flying carpet was soaked with blood, as were his raiments. His imp minion stood at his side looking bewildered and unapologetically mirthful.

"They took Komodo," Everfierce growled. "You're the only one that can fly!" There was no response. "VO'JAU!"

The shaman was far away. She was doing all that she could to keep out of the clutches of the Grimtotem and out of the line of sight of the airborne Alliance warlock. Hooves trampled her totems faster than she could set them down. Vo'jau heard Everfierce's call, but she was very suddenly preoccupied by the gigantic Felguard that slammed down in front of her.

Vo'jau flipped forward to slow her momentum and planted a totem before landing on her feet. Orange-white fire exploded around the benign-looking mask-on-a-stick. On the place, a sizzling mass of fire materialized and took the shape of a fearsome guardian elemental. The Felguard sliced through the fire's face in one easy swing. The elemental reformed with a flit of blazing light and locked its fist upon the demon's head. As Grimtotem warriors piled in on top of the fight, terrific flames leapt up from the totem and burned them down.

The shaman reassumed her wolfen form and bolted for her fallen comrades. As soon as she was in range, she flooded Skari's crash site with healing waters. She only managed to get the one cast off before Ursula got to her. Vo'jau's canine cry split the din of the battle field wide open. Her body came to a skidding stop. She collapsed in the dirt with the gnome on top of her, anchored by two daggers dug into the troll woman's back. To Ursula's horror, however, the troll beneath her did not stay down. Chunks of earth dislodged from the ground around them. They thumped, like thick and malleable clay, onto the shaman's shoulders, nape, and around the blades in her back.

Ursula cried out and twisted the daggers, throwing her weight into the hilts until the blades were not visible for the troll's vibrant blue skin and red blood. She pulled one loose and jabbed at the base of the troll's skull, but she was not quick enough. The broadside of Everfierce's axe punted her twenty yards into the jungle. Vo'jau seized the one dagger still stuck in her body and, screaming, yanked it free. She set about starting repairs on their wounds as the pair of them ran back for Skari.

Vo'jau fell on her knees beside the warlock's head. He was cold. There was not a rasp of breath in his chest. She began casting.

Bengal landed softly at Ursula's side. The gnome managed to sit up. She wasn't going to stand, though, not with her leg twisted like that. "Fall back," Ursula advised calmly. Bengal was fierce, and she could fly, but she couldn't beat the three of them on her own.

"Yes. We have enough." Bengal moved a number of yards forward, skirting the range of her enemies. She raised her voice. Orcish was an ugly language that sounded best loud. "Do you value her life?" she asked them, and it was only obvious she spoke of their missing party member.

Vo'jau remained crouched over Skari. It was left to Everfierce to address the night elf. A number of terrible ironies played in the space between one and the other. Tauren and night elves shared an outlook. Their races were bound by ties that defied the faction war of the Alliance and the Horde. In another life, Everfierce may have followed the path her tribe had wanted her to follow. She may have been a druid, may have understood the cause of the night elf in front of her. Then again, she might just as well have been born a Grimtotem.

"What you are doing is committing is an act of war. You are inviting Garrosh's wrath on Nighthaven!" Everfierce hollered.

"Then I will have his head as well!" Bengal roared. "You possess something Archdruid Staghelm desires. It is the property of the Kaldorei. You have no right to hold it!"

Enivan's threats echoed in the back of Everfierce's concussed and hazy head. "Our actions are not our own. We have our orders. I cannot give you the trinket." At once, an arrow sailed between them and buried its head in the dirt near the tree line. Everfierce grimaced and added, "this is not the place for this conversation!"

Bengal raised her polearm and pointed it toward the defiant Everfierce. "Agreed. Lead your party to Stonetalon Peak. Bring the locket, and I'll release your comrade."

These were not workable terms, but Everfierce did not see any other option but to concede. At the very least, it would give them a chance to escape the Grimtotem with their lives. "Deal!" she shouted.

"_Karath'ashei!_" Bengal cried, and the sound transformed as her body did into that of bird.

The Felguard, still in the midst of a battle with Vo'jau's fire elemental and the rest of the Grimtotem, promptly disappeared. A succubus dove through the canopy to collect Ursula while Bengal seized Shy by his shoulders. The Alliance disappeared into the jungle.

"We need to leave."

Vo'jau did not look up. She was holding Skari's hand in hers, thumping it insistently with the back of her second finger. She muttered to him in Zandali.

He was alive. Not very, but alive. Little movements in his face, little twitches in his fingers gave it away. And then he sputtered, mournfully, "Zul . . . fi . . . ko . . . "

* * *

><p>Author's Notes:<p>

I apologize for the incongruent length of this chapter. The Alliance party took forever to get out of Feathermoon Stronghold. I blame character development!

I don't want to draw lines in the sand. I'm not a big fan of 'good' versus 'evil.' Warcraft isn't really about that, either. It's undeniable that the Horde party makes up the protagonist of the story, and that the Alliance party is their antagonist, but it's important that I try and shine a sympathetic light (and, conversely, a disagreeable light) on both of them. This is a chapter where feelings about either side should collide and, ideally, conflict. That is to say, I have no idea who to root for.

Edit: Removed the section about travel to the Emerald Dream. I recently learned that it's near impossible.


	6. Chapter 6

**Spirit of the Locket**

* * *

><p>The snows of Winterspring turned red with blood.<p>

Solara whipped an arrow out of the quiver on his back, notched it, and shot it straight into the gaping gullet of a frostsaber. He dodged left to avoid being hit with the cat's dead weight. No sooner did he have his footing, he had to change it to evade a whistling Kaldorei arrow. His boots slipped on the frozen lake surface, so he ducked down like a crouching spider and used one hand to steady himself. The arrow flew passed him at a wicked speed. It knocked the head off a Forsaken warrior thirty yards away, in the shadow of Frostsaber rock. Five others fell the same way.

This is what defeat looked like.

The gritting sound of ice filled Solara's ears. He skated his heel and tripped a charging Sentinel before she got her Moonglaive into him. In a roundhouse motion, his other boot connected with her jaw and sent her beautiful helmet flying. The teeth of his halberd bit into the ice. He swung around its staff as quick as lightning, landed on his feet, and shot his unfortunate opponent in the head.

The Kaldorei archers weren't visible for the trees. Their hippogryphs stormed through the ruined Forsaken lines like bowling balls, toppling skeletal soldiers as they went. The frostsabers did the rest.

There was another cat on his heels. Solara tilted his bow and fired directly between the beast's eyes. The arrow lacked the speed to punch through his target's skull. The force only jarred the cat's brain such that it lost its course momentarily. He turned and ran. Distance was his only ally.

He gained enough ground to plug the cat's body with three poison-slick arrows. It fell at his feet, just as so many others had. It kept snarling as the breath left its body, kept twisting its legs, fighting mad until its life was utterly spent. It died with its wild eyes open, staring at him.

Solara understood he would not see another sunrise. He had watched Ulduar fall, he had stormed the gates of Icecrown; and he was going to die in this wretched, wintry valley.

Rimed leather touched the skin of his neck. It was his own gloved hand. That fact took a moment to register in his head. Without thinking, he was hooking one finger around the little chain buried beneath his armor. The locket seemed to have grown into a beautiful thing while it had been hidden these passed few days. It was wonder, and power, and hope. It shined in the dusky light. It wanted to be opened; and it seemed only fair to Solara that he ought to open it at least once, finally, before he lost the chance to do so forever.

Someone was screaming a couple of yards to his left. The voice was Kaldorei. What was she saying? _Prepare to die,_ it sounded like. His hand closed over the locket.

"You're a little late!" he snarled, his black humor the prerogative of a Forsaken. The teeth of his halberd caught the blades of her Moonglaive. He jerked, simultaneously pulling the glaive from her and spinning the butt of the staff upwards and into her stomach. Her plate armor _clinked_ as if it were laughing.

The night elf ducked, feinted left and slipped under the next swing of his halberd. Solara backpedaled to maintain distance, but the Sentinel was _so_ fast. He moved back again, and again, leaping where just another step wouldn't do—and then he tripped.

The Moonglaive was half stuck in the frozen lake. It cut through his leggings as he fell over it. He heard, more than felt, the blade rend his unliving flesh. His helm did him hardly any good when the back of his head hit the ice. The sky, and the loose strands of his own dark hair, filled his field of vision.

The night elf yanked her weapon out of its icy arrest. She brought the glaive up high, so high it caught the dying light of the day in its silver blade. "_Elune-Adore,_" she said, and inside the sound bloomed a thousand boasts of ending the unlife of a Dark Ranger.

Solara's fingers dug into the gloved palms of his hands.

And then the lake _broke_.

The thick ice shattered under the night elf's feet and the cracks gave way for the barbed roots shooting up from the lakebed. Thorns knocked the Sentinel away, and then they moved after her, catching her, constricting her in a deadly embrace. Solara could hardly see what was happening through the vaporous, green magic whirling around him.

This . . . It was some kind of attack. He couldn't just lie there and die. He had to get up.

Before he knew what was happening, he was running. But . . . his leg. What happened? He was _running_.

The trill of a hippogryph put an end to Solara's train of thought. The beast came barreling toward him from the trees. Solara slammed his heel into the ice, splayed, caught himself on his hand and pivoted in a new direction all in one fluid movement. He kicked his legs until he was up on his feet again, but the hippogryph had closed the space between them by then.

A grunt of anticipatory pain came out of his mouth before the antlers caught up to him. He spun, hands out, to grab hold of them as if it would help him any. Green-white light exploded between them.

A moment later, the hippogryph lay dead; and the strangest laughter started on the battle field. Solara hadn't laughed in years.

* * *

><p>In defiance of every expectation, of the laws of <em>nature itself<em>, Solara Dawncaller marched back into the Forsaken camp a couple of hours before the sun would rise. It would rise. He would see it. He was not victorious, but he was not defeated. He was the only one.

"Report," was all that Eustace Winston, the commanding officer of the Winterspring offensive, could think of to say. Reclined from the mess of maps in front of him, his pointed chin cradled in his rotting hand, Eustace surveyed the unscathed Dark Ranger before him with guarded disbelief.

"A splinter group of the Wintersaber Trainers flanked us as soon as the captain gave the order to charge. Aerial attackers cut us off from our healers. There were archers on the east side of the lake that our scouts had not detected. It was over before it began, sir."

"And at what point did you decide to betray the Dark Lady and run for your pathetic life?"

Solara fought the pinch of a smirk in the corner of his mouth. "At no point, sir."

Suddenly, the table between them was in the air and flying to one side of the room. Maps fluttered to the ground. Eustace surged toward Solara and grabbed him by the throat. "INSOLENT RAT! Give me a reason not to tear your lying tongue from your head!"

Unflinching even as his boots left the floor, Solara slowly spoke. "Respect. Tenacity. Power!" The locket's energy swelled, becoming tendrils of green light that twisted around Solara's neck and Eustace's arm.

Eustace threw Solara to the floor and drew his weapon. The runeblade was at Solara's throat a second later. "What treachery is this?" the death knight snarled.

"It is no such thing, sir." Solara rolled his neck, emphasizing it as he drew the locket into view. "Fear not. 'Tis only jewelry."

"Only jewelry," Eustace pensively growled. He reached down and took hold of the necklace. Solara begrudgingly allowed it to be lifted over his head. "Are you telling me this tarnished trinket caused the elves and their cats to fall back?"

"No." The lack of the proper title, 'sir,' resounded in the dark silence after Solara spoke. "I did this. I wielded its power. The enemy continued to attack me long after the last of my team fell, and _I_ persevered!" His pride stood where his body could not. Impatient, Solara carefully grasped the end of the death knight's blade and moved it away from his throat. There was no resistance, but all the same Eustace did not shift from where he stood.

"Were you expecting accolades?" asked Eustace, glancing passed the Dark Ranger as evidenced by the shift in the icy light of his eyes. "This power does not belong to you to use as you will. Guards!"

Solara tried to get to his feet, but the Forsaken that poured into the tent prevented him from standing on his own accord. Polearms crossed behind him. Boney fingers bit into his shoulders.

"Escort this filth outside."

Morning was on its way. The faintest hint of red-orange light filtered into the black horizon, but it was hard to see beyond the trees. Only the faint sparkle of the gently falling snow betrayed the darkness of the night.

They forced Solara down on his knees in the center of the camp. He slammed his lambent, red eyes shut as the mud beneath him splashed upon his face.

_Respect. _Tenacity._ Power._

Solara didn't think he had a heart. It had been silent for so long; but now, he felt it breaking.

The Forgotten Shadow had forgotten _him_.

"IS THIS FORSAKEN SOUL YOUR BROTHER?" Eustace bellowed, and every soldier dropped what they were doing and looked.

The camp roared, "YES!"

"HEAR HIS CRIMES! He consorts with DRUIDS. He CELEBRATES the loss of our brothers this night. He has STOLEN from our Dark Lady!"

Elune had damned him.

"IS HE YOUR BROTHER?"

"NO!"

And the Light?

Please. _Please._

Ghoulish, faceless men ripped off his armor. An ornate and twisted axe appeared before him.

Eustace sneered. "Rest in pieces."

The axe came down. The sound of metal through bone rang through the valley. There was a wet _thunk_ as the Dark Ranger's head hit the ground.

And, at last, the sun rose.

A diligent moment of silence overtook the camp. Slowly, the soldiers turned back to their tasks; and Eustace turned and called to one of his guards. "I have a task for you."

A Lightslayer turned his head.

* * *

><p>Hours later and miles to the north, a white panther skidded into the longhouse at Starfall Village. Before it was stopped, it had transformed into a disheveled young night elf who looked more startled to see his superiors than they looked to see him. "Undead rogue!" he panted, doubled over with a hand on his chest. "A zeppelin from Stonetalon mountain! They're taking the locket to Sylvanas!"<p>

Tense anger and anxiety spread over the assembled night elves, exacerbating their already stressed states. The amber-eyed male made a little beckoning gesture, and one of the females from the balcony approached him promptly. "Go to the Archdruid. Have him mobilize a strike team. Fly now!" With a flap of sudden wings, she was gone.

The young scout was coughing over a cup of water one of the others had gotten for him. His knees wobbled and he braced himself against the wall. He must have run _so _far. "We need reinforcements," he choked out. "One betrayed them already . . . they cut him down. . . . If the package . . . doesn't reach the Undercity . . . in three days . . . the Forsaken will sail for Kalimdor en mass. . . . They will hunt . . . they will burn Winterspring to the ground . . ." His mouth kept moving, but he had no strength left to put behind the words. The young night elf collapsed into the arms of one of his superiors.

* * *

><p>Four days later and half a continent away, the locket reached the Great Lift; and Everfierce, Skari, and Vo'jau began their long, long trek to the Moonglade.<p>

* * *

><p>Author's Notes:<p>

It strikes me now that there's no mention (or plans thereof) in this story about Archdruid Runetotem or any of the Horde counterpart druids of the Cenarion Circle. I guess the reason for that is covered well enough by Bengal in the previous chapter, when she referred to the locket as 'Kaldorei property'.

The anti-druid rhetoric by Eustace might sound a little odd given that druids are as much a part of the Horde as any other class. He speaks so freely, and with such prejudiced, because the Forsaken certainly have no part in druidry, or the restoration of life, or any connection whatsoever to nature. In fact, the Forsaken agenda in Winterspring (or anywhere, really) very much conflicts with these ideas. "And death to the living!" as the Grand Apothecary Putress said.


	7. Chapter 7

**Spirit of the Locket**

* * *

><p>The massive wooden platform lurched when it reached the top of the Great Lift. It did not have a chance to steady before the tauren watchmen bade the three travelers into the Barrens.<p>

"_Nechi ki hale chi_," a road weary Everfierce said in passing. The watchmen nodded back with mute respect.

Night had fallen. A tall, roaring fire lit up the camp at the edge of the Barrens and darkened the rest of the plains. A faint light in the distant north signified just how much ground stood between them and the Crossroads. Beyond that, the jagged mountains, barely visible against the star-strewn sky, looked almost impossible to reach. Although their pace had been backbreaking, it still did not seem that were moving fast enough. The sooner they satisfied their warden's wanderlust (or whatever the purpose of this wicked quest was), the sooner Komodo could be rescued.

"We haven't eaddin in t'ree days," Vo'jau quietly reminded her companions as they crossed through the camp. An orc boy in homemade, mismatched armor eyed the three of them suspiciously. When they got closer to him, he stood and scurried into a large tent.

Skari did not see anything but the road that led out of the camp and into the dark wilderness. He swung his staff forward without hesitation. "We not stopping."

Komodo wasn't eating tonight, so neither would Skari. He couldn't stop—not until his feet bled and his knees gave out from walking, walking, walking. She was family; not by blood, but by ritual. Some would argue that was a stronger tie. Forsaking bonds like these could turn brother against brother, nephew against uncle. Skari had nothing but love for La'mok; and if he had to cross paths with him before rescuing poor _Zulfi'ko_ from her captors, he'd bare his chest for the boy's blade without thinking twice. It was his fault.

"You nearly gone t'be wid Bwonsamdi last night. How much further you t'ink you get on not'ing but my mojo?"

"Further den here."

Vo'jau grabbed Skari by his arm. He wrenched away from her with a middling measure of effort. "Lissen, ya old fool," the shaman hissed. "Do you not know what _out of mana_ means? Dis de end of de road fo' tonight. Ya go on by yourself, den ya go to ya grave and you _neva _do _not'ing _for dat girl!"

It was hard to tell, judging by the intensity of Skari's glare, whether or not Vo'jau's words had penetrated his thick skull. The firelight and the dance of shadows made their stalemate all the more fierce. In some ways, their tusks looked sharper and their eyes wilder, and it was easier to fear what might happen if they stayed in camp over what might await them on the savanna.

The shuffling of canvas disrupted the trolls' feud. An orc woman appeared in the mouth of a nearby tent. The little boy orc from before was just barely visible at her side, clinging to her robe.

Everfierce stepped forward—her ability to do so thanks to Vo'jau's healing magic. Her hooves were still soft and hurt plenty, but they were whole and they did their job. "Tell me, friend, does Stormhoof still tend the inn here?"

"No," said the orc woman. "Nima does." She put a fist to her chest to illustrate that she was speaking of herself.

There were more eloquent ways to ask for a bed, and for food and drink, but courtesy seemed paltry and foreign just then. Everfierce thrust a small pouch of gold out and into the air, letting its metallic jingle speak for her.

Their funds didn't go far, but Nima was generous. She filled their bowls with a cream of banana, pumpkin, and milk, and she set out a wooden pan of cornbread for them to pick at as they pleased. The three of them sat quietly on logs arranged near the fire and abided the orc woman's compelling hospitality. She told them about her husband, who was off to combat in Ashenvale, and about her son who spent much more time being brave and troublesome than he spent doing chores around the camp. And she told Skari, in her earthy, matter-of-fact way, that he was going to eat by his hand or hers. He disdained her for her fussing, but he didn't want to explain, didn't want to argue, so he pinched off a crust of the bread and stuck it in his mouth. It was just easier this way.

"If you stop in at the Crossroads, you talk to Moor. He see to it you live through the night out there. You go beyond there?"

There was no sound for a time but the crackling of the fire; and then Everfierce's intimidating silhouette moved. She rolled her head between her shoulders until the bones of her neck gave a satisfying pop. "Andorhal," she answered, and her companions said nothing, and in their silence they all agreed to lie.

Nima gave a grunt of unease. "Even with the Lich King dead, everyone is off to war." In the playing fire, the orc woman seemed to see something—a memory, a promise, or maybe a vision of a hellish future. Whatever it was, it put her talkativeness to an end. She was quiet for a moment, and then she tugged her son awake so that she could drag him to bed. Before shuffling back into the big tent, she bid the trio by the fire a good night.

Was the night so good? It was quiet. They could rest now. If things had been different . . . They would have docked at the towers at the Undercity and found their way to the bulwark at the western plaguelands. The captains would be rallying the raiders on this night. They would not be resting now. They would be adorning armor and casting enchantments. The pounding of war drums would fill the air, so loud they could feel it in their chests, in their bones. The scent of the rotting, undead woods of old Lordaeron, and that of the fires of battle, and the traveled and unwashed bodies of the soldiers standing with them would be so thick, so sour that even breathing was a battle. The color guard would heft the Banshee Queen's banners high; and as the fabric moved and the polearms of the front line were raised, the sky would go missing.

And they would march, and march, and the world would become narrower and narrower until all it was existed between the shoulders of the two soldiers in front of them. And then, the charge. And then, the crunch of armor and bone, and the wet of blood on their skin and the not-knowing if it was theirs, or their ally's, or their enemy's. And then, sometime, if their deity or their ancestors or whatever power they held sacred loved them enough, there would be an end. And it would be beautiful, whether they lay broken in the mud or they stood still breathing as the fog of war cleared.

It was one thing to take a job, take an order, and take a life; it was something else to be taken.

As the night wore on, the fire died down. Skari had just gotten it in his head to retire to the inn when a sudden wind snuffed out the last orange embers in the circle. Everfierce, who was asleep where she sat, roused as the air changed, her hand already upon the hilt of the Grimtotem axe she now carried with her. Vo'jau was seething for _what now?_ If not the Alliance, not the Grimtotem, not wild beasts, then is it the centaur, or maybe the gnolls?

Something approached sounding of hoof beats and the crackle of arcane flames. The clatter of armor and bones pervaded the camp. Skeletal horses were coming down the Gold Road.

"Forsaken, out here?" Vo'jau whispered. Everfierce made certain the locket was tucked out of sight.

Their guilt urged them to run, but they didn't.

The clunk of one Forsaken's saronite boots hitting the ground stirred the air. The skeletal horses had come to a stop at the end of the road. The other three riders remained in their saddles. One pulled open a map and began to talk to one of his companions. Meanwhile, the dismounted Forsaken approached the camp's inn. The ungainly, loping _thump, drag, thump, drag, thump,_ of his walk stopped short of the big tent when he turned his head and noticed the three figures around the black fire pit.

Without a word, his skinless fingers slid to the grip of his sword. He loosed the guard with a flick of his thumb. "You lot travelers?"

"Yes," Everfierce said, cautiously surveying the not-quite-dead soldier. "And you?"

"Emissary. Searching for Cenarion's heretics. Believed to be responsible for a missing zeppelin. Seen anything?"

Everfierce gave Vo'jau a half-hearted, curious glance and was reciprocated a careless shrug. Skari sat like a shadow, unconcerned, deaf and mute.

Hinting at reluctance, the undead let go of the hilt of his sword. "Where've you come from?"

Everfierce didn't have a quick answer for him this time. Lying to an orcish innkeeper in the middle of nowhere about heading Andorhal was a simple thing. To try the same thing on a Forsaken, who most likely knew the timetables, was probably suicide.

The sound of the shaman's armor sliding against her restless body frayed Everfierce's nerves. The unease growing amongst them could be measured in the clink of the mail links, as if it were the ticking of a clock. Everfierce spat out the first, and farthest, and most plausible outpost that came to mind. "Grom'gol."

Judging by the way the undead ripped his sword from his sheath, he was not convinced. "The Maiden's Fancy is a week from port," he hissed.

"By _portal_," Everfierce countered, and as she stood the heavy log on which she'd been sitting was rolled out of her way. "Do not make trouble where there is none."

The undead paused, then turned his head over his shoulder and shouted, "Victor!" Without discussion, another Forsaken dismounted his horse. He did not approach the group, however; and instead began channeling a teleportation spell. Within seconds, he was gone.

In Zandali, Skari muttered, "he's gone to check with the portal master."

"That's not good," Vo'jau replied, keeping the trollish tongue. There was no hiding their desire for secrecy, though; and so for as much of their conversation as they kept between them, the more it sounded suspicious. Even Everfierce looked worried.

"We're not a part of the Cenarion Circle," the latter spoke up, and it was just a hair too loud to be considered unconcerned. "If you're looking for a zeppelin, then you can start by tracing its course!"

"Implying we're in the wrong place?" the Forsaken rasped, raising his blade in the tauren's direction. He took a small step toward her, canted his head, and changed the conversation. "Tell me, what kind of Horde _cattle_ wields a Grimtotem axe?" The great glowing circles of his eyes narrowed; but in taking another step forward, they blasted wide open. Thin lines of putrefaction moved across his face as if scratched there by an unseen hand.

Across the fire pit, Skari stood (his full, intimidating, seven feet in height) with both hands twisted in a gesture indicative of shadow magic. The long sleeves of his robe swirled as he bent his arms and curled his fingers, invoking and throwing a second spell at the aggressing Forsaken. The undead, in turn, struggled as he began to sink to his knees. Something, it seemed, was weighing him down.

Vo'jau did not need more of a cue than that to run, but for good measure one of the mounted Forsaken drove a tendril of shadow into the log near to her. With a flat palm, the shaman sheared the wind to deflect the spell as it snaked toward her; and then she turned on her heel and hit the ground on four paws.

Everfierce couldn't find the will to move, to run from battle, even if it was against members of her own faction. Could she really raise her weapon against the Horde? Even with Thrall gone and Cairne dead, she had never thought her part in their nation would come to such a quick and bitter end.

She watched as Skari summoned and set his Felhunter upon one of the casters, and she still somehow nearly missed his staff swinging for her face. His words, "let's go," rushed by her ears as Skari, suddenly upon his flying carpet, idled alongside her. As he spoke, the Forsaken's priest was dispelling the warlock's curses. Everfierce could see the affected soldiers regaining their mobility. With great haste, she leapt upon the carpet (stumbling as the Forsaken priest stuck her with some virtually invisible spell); and then they were off into the savanna.

* * *

><p>They had not yet made it halfway to the ruins of Camp Taurajo when Skari set down the carpet on the plains to allow for Vo'jau to catch up to them. As the ghostly wolf of a shaman neared at last, a spark of light erupted from the ground between them. Tongues of magic twisted up and up until there stood Enivan once again, his robes rolling, his long hair unfurling as he stood before them, submerged in the current of some unknown force.<p>

Everfierce reflexively checked the locket wound around her neck. It seemed to have opened on its on accord and dripped evanescent, cold magic. She let the locket fall outside of her shirt and watched with quiet distrust as the colored aura slowly came clean from her hand.

The specter of the elf peered around, taking in all of the Barren's night. His wide, white eyes fixed on the horizon, and he spoke. "The undead are riding. They come faster than the dawn." He may have had more to say, but he did not get the words out before his ethereal being was sliced in two by the swing of Skari's staff. The fissure ran through the ghost from head to toe, and he vanished.

Vo'jau was out of her wolf form and armed with her mace and dagger before the warlock had completed his swing. She held the curved blade in Skari's direction, ready to end him should Enivan make good on his promise to punish treachery. No sooner did the warlock's arm come to a stop, though, did the fingers of green smoke left curling around the staff snap like lightning and strike the cracked earth. The ghost reformed in an instant, his torso half-solid around the shaman's dagger wielding hand.

"Stop this," the elf bellowed, and his form rippled, sending icy chills through Vo'jau's blood. She dropped her dagger, but Skari did not give up the fight. The troll smashed the head of his staff into the ground where the ghost would have stood had he feet. Enivan was more resilient this time.

"Dey took her BECAUSE OF YOU!" Skari roared, wholly possessed by his anger. He slid his hands, bringing the butt of the staff up and around to slice through the ghost's head. Enivan vanished before he was touched and rematerialized a few feet away. The force Skari put behind the swing set him off balance. He caught himself on his knee and glared at his intangible opponent from beneath the mess of his sweat slick dreadlocks.

At last, the spirit took notice of the lack of one of their party. Wistfully, he observed, "the half breed is missing." The words were coarse and inelegant, but their context affected him severely. The green light of him flickered and dimmed and the elf's head bowed. Darkness crept upon him more and more. "She lives. To the west."

"Stonetalon Peak," Everfierce told him.

Enivan's image shuddered. "You must save the girl."

"Fo' once, we agree," Skari growled. "How 'bout you quit hiding in dat shiny 'n help us do dis t'ing."

"The Shadow comes." The ghost whipped around, forgetting the trio for a moment. He had eyes only for the dark north. "You … must … avenge … _Solara_." His voice stretched and curled like that of one holding back sobs.

The three Horde bristled against the new stipulation to their quest. "And who be Solara?" Vo'jau dared to ask.

"The one I could not save." Enivan's face wept its very smoke, until the whites of his eyes were vacant holes in his head and his eyelids drooped to his chin. His hair dripped like water, falling to nothingness in the dead grass. "The lost ranger slain by the knight. The knight in the north. His riders ride for you," the spirit quavered, and then he melted away.

The trio abruptly found themselves staring across a void at one another and no one else. Perhaps by some otherworldly mischief, the spirit's misery crept into their skin. A sense of urgency coursed through them.

Everfierce slowly brought her hand to the locket and pinched it closed. Eager to order her thoughts, she asked of her companions, "do we chance the Gold Road?"

"No," Vo'jau said, thumbing the amber plug in her lip as she plotted a wiser route. "We divert to de marsh."

"Wrong way," Everfierce said, her tone questioning the troll's motive more than her sense of direction.

"We take windriders out of de Brackenwall Village. Up de Southfury. Ashenvale, den d' Talondeep path. Two, t'ree days. De Alliance kin expect we take dat long to get to de peak."

Everfierce grimaced. There were a thousand screaming reasons not to ever go to the marsh but she could not raise her voice in argument. The longer they could delay another engagement with the Forsaken, the better. "And once we reach there?"

In a voice of naked malevolence, Skari answered her. "We rip de meat from dey bones and feed it to de spiders."

"We'll need more of a plan than that," Everfierce said.

"'Specially if we gon' do somethin' about dis knight in de north," added Vo'jau as she slid by the tauren and onto to flying carpet.

Without prompting, Skari lifted them up and steered the carpet south to the dark mire on the horizon that was Dustwallow.


	8. Chapter 8

The Spirit of the Locket

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><p>The inhabitants of Stonetalon Peak were not eager to accommodate any warband, regardless of its cause. Even so, Keeper Albagorm could not be expected to do anything other than invite Bengal and her wounded company into the settlement when they arrived in the night. Once beckoned, healers rushed to receive Shy and Ursula. The latter was doing far better in her makeshift splint and was able to limp on her own to a bench outside the inn. The half-elf, who had endured two days with naught but frostweave bandages keeping his chest sealed, was in far graver condition. Sonia made a quick mental note of the building to which they whisked Shy, for she feared their leader did not have the capacity at that moment to care.<p>

Rhysiart landed in the middle of town with the troll woman grasped in his talons. Without needing to be asked, the hippogryph released his captive as soon as Bengal was able to lay hands upon her. The troll was weak. When she was jerked from the ground, her feet would not hold her. That did not matter so much, though, as she was tossed across the grass. She crumpled and was grabbed again, and moved so unkindly in this manner until she was knocked against the column of an ancient stone archway. Bramble vines twisted around her of their own volition to hold her in that place.

Bengal observed the constriction of the vines with marked apathy. No sooner had the fetter's growth ceased did the druid sink her clawed fingers into the troll's tattered braids, and then she slammed her knee into the prisoner's face. Komodo did not have the spirit to lift her head after the blow, so Bengal knelt and whispered Orcish to her. "I have asked your friends to meet us here. If they come here, you are free. Do you understand this?"

Komodo's chest moved with a sudden sob. It was evident to all around—the night elves, the dryads, and Sonia who looked on from afar—that this troll woman was no soldier, that she was some unfortunate civilian caught up in something far beyond her ability to withstand; and all the better that she was broken so easily. "Yes," she murmured. She sagged in her bindings, the tension of terror in her muscles fading with her failing strength.

"But they may not come here," Bengal said, "for they hold an item which they do not wish to relinquish to me. You have seen this item, yes?" There were several seconds of silence wherein one may have supposed the troll lost consciousness, and so the druid vocally prodded her, "it is a necklace."

"Yes," at last Komodo said. "A locket."

"Do you think your friends will come for you?"

Komodo's thoughts were haunted by the image of the ghostly night elf. His command had been ominous to begin with, but now its implication was so much worse. She wept.

Bengal shook her head softly. "As your friends betray you, I will give you the opportunity to save yourself. Tell me where they are taking the locket. I will set you free as soon as I have it in my hands."

The shake of the troll's shoulders was unchanged. She knew her friends had not betrayed her, but they could not come to her rescue. They all faced certain doom if they did not meet Enivan's demand, and for this reason she could not betray their destination, either. Komodo was consumed with the misery of her circumstances and as such gave no reply.

Here, the night elf lapsed into Darnassian. "Then, it appears we will be spending much time together." Bengal bowed her head and drew back to stand. With one hand, she bade Sonia's attention; and she said, so that Komodo could understand, "do you know the Kaldorei word _z__andu_? It means _fear_."

The switch of Bengal's vibrant silver eyes from the troll woman to the allied warlock could almost be counted as a physical attack. Sonia flinched as the druid's focus fell on her. Hesitation welled inside the young human. To her, it did not seem their captive would survive much more torment. Still, she was obligated by Bengal's unarguable stare to begin casting.

Before Komodo's eyes, the dark night whorled into grotesque faces and malformed bodies, monsters all the likes of which she had never seen even in nightmares. In visions as real as life itself, they tore at her body, and then at her entrails, and then at her bones; they ripped her unborn child out of her and consumed it limb by limb. Initially, she did not think she could be fooled into thinking she had the breath to speak. Rapidly, that idea changed. Her screaming did not let up until day's light—and then, at last . . .

"THE _MOONGLADE_!"

It took Bengal half a second to draw the route in her mind and another half of a second to give the order. "The Emerald Sanctuary. Sonia, Rhysiart!" The druid was in the air in the next instant.

* * *

><p>They broke their flight in Astranaar and left Rhysiart, who was completely exhausted after days of nonstop travel, with the hippogryph master there. It was unseasonably cold in Ashenvale for the time of year; and knowing further north the weather would only be worse, their small party bartered heavy cloaks from the local clothier. As they departed the town, evanescent steam billowed in their wake. The road into Felwood burned beneath the hooves of Sonia's dreadsteed.<p>

Sometime along the way, the young warlock lost sight of her druid companion for the tangled, leafless limbs of the skeletal trees. The sick woods enclosed her, and she was alone but for the demon whose sentience under her control was debatable at best. One might expect, as the fel mist swirled before the swing of her mount's legs, a warlock would not feel so out of place here, but this was not the case with Sonia. It wasn't the rotting, nearly departed inhabitants of the region that bothered her. Rather, it was the furbolgs. The Timbermaw knew about everything that happened in their woods.

Just the sound of a distant growl, like that of a bear, was enough to get her pulling on her mount's plated withers. The demon's gait faltered and then it came to a complete stop. Sonia twisted in the armored saddle, the pressure of her knee and heel causing the dreadsteed to softly turn. There was nothing, nothing, nothing but the gaping darkness and the sound of the fel horse's breathing—much steadier than that of its master.

The call of a bird overhead reined Sonia's jumpy nerves for a brief moment. The reassurance she felt flickered like a candle in the wind and then went out as a bright, white vulture sailed out over the clearing to her left. Those definitely weren't endemic to the region. She wasn't at all surprised when the bird swooped and made a beeline for her.

With a flourish of dark power, she spurred her dreadsteed to move. The demon lurched forward and bolted, following the road without mind for the impending interception of the vulture. Sonia's eyes were on the trees across the clearing. She was searching for the hunter to whom the animal belonged.

The vulture screeched as it closed in, its talons reaching and its wings swinging wildly. It was all Sonia could do to rip the broach from her neck and throw her cloak into the aerial attacker. She drew her staff across her lap in case the vulture recovered too quickly, but with a quick glance back she was certain it would be tangled in the cloak for a little while.

The Emerald Sanctuary wouldn't tolerate this sort of violence, but at least an hour would pass before that outpost would crawl over the horizon. Gritting her teeth, Sonia thrust her hand into the air and threw a fist of green fire up at the sky. Her magic burned through the darkness, the canopy, and the fel fume looming over the sickened trees; and it announced her location to all of Felwood.

Within seconds, ominous whistling touched her ears; and in another moment, a crossbow's bolt slammed into the side of her dreadsteed's head. Blinding fire exploded from the wound, and Sonia shrieked. The demon's legs buckled one after the other and spilled the animal, and its rider, in the road—the latter several yards from the former. Only the split-second reaction of casting a demonic armoring spell upon herself saved the young warlock from being impaled on her steed's horns. Her physical injuries were minimal, but as she pulled herself up on her elbows it felt as if her head had been split open against the ground. Old, ritual magic had been rent. The dreadsteed howled and thrashed wildly as the normally tame flame lighting its mane and hooves spread across and broke its scaled hide. The beast's armor dislodged from its spine and, on tendrils of fiery ichor, slipped onto the road.

Behind her frail hands, a horrified Sonia stole glimpses of her demon's undoing. Her sobs were a misplaced sentiment for a being that was not friend, family, or compatriot; but she was heartbroken all the same. She watched as its fervor was spent and its light suddenly died.

And then a shadow fell over her. She could barely sum a voice with which to cast, to scream. She rolled to be able to put eyes on her enemy. A Forsaken militiaman of some sort fled toward the trees as nightmares clouded his waking eyes. The hunter? But why did he close distance so fast? He could have shot her dead from range instead of her dreadsteed.

The answer came on wings. The vulture returned, soaring down the road with the silhouette of its master following on foot. Sonia slung quick spells at him as the undead hunter stopped to steadily nock an arrow. He would have loosed it had he had one more free second; alas, an enormous panther collided with him and together they sailed off the road.

"Bengal!" Sonia screamed. The vulture's right wing dipped and it turned back.

"Don't you know what happens to little girls that get lost in the woods?" growled a dry, dead voice. Once gone and now returned, the Forsaken that had put down her mount revealed himself, briefly, with delicate daggers in his hands, to be a rogue.

Sonia was suddenly very aware of the fact she had not taken a moment, as they whipped by so quickly, to put herself on her feet nor summon a minion or conjure any implements. She was quite possibly in the worst possible position to take on an opponent that meant to cut her life short; and in the face of this mortal adversity, her despair turned to fury. It was beyond her to give up—she couldn't, not when, even at twenty paces, she could twist her fingers and carve pain and sickness into the Forsaken soldier.

He dove into the shadows of the trees. Sonia scrambled to her feet and had only just brushed her hair from her eyes when the undead's molding knuckles connected with her side. She doubled over in pain, and her mind could not register the sensation of the rogue's blades sliding through her robes. It was all she could do to draw molten misery into her hand, and then turn and crush the spark of that magic against her enemy's skull. His head swung back with a force the warlock's small body did not possess—at least, not physically—and once more his possessed body fled. This time, Sonia did not hesitate to cast on him.

Bengal caught up to the warlock later. The druid seemed neither surprised nor impressed to find her alive. Without remarking on the human's tear stained cheeks and state of disarray, she cast rudimentary healing spells over her team member's wounds.

"He killed my dreadsteed," Sonia said shakily.

"Did you kill him?"

The young woman's breath caught. "Yes."

"Unfortunately, I cannot say the same. The hunter saw fit to run rather than face true death in battle. Either he's a coward—and I have not known the undead to show cowardice—or he has someone to whom he must report."

Sonia was still finding her feet. She was still in a decent condition to walk, but waves of weakness and darkness washed over her with the wind. The Sanctuary couldn't be that far now. If they moved at a sound pace, they could make it there before nightfall.

The warlock swallowed hard and replied, "they're looking for the locket. They know it'll come this way."

"You may not be privy to the strife of the Circle, but let me make you aware that the Forsaken have a fortified camp in Winterspring through which they wage war on us. These outriders are not uncommon here." Sonia made a discouraged sound, and so Bengal went on to say, "I don't mean to say you are wrong. The Forsaken intend to deliver the locket to their leader. They will have every solider they can spare looking for it. You must be more prudent, however, in your actions in this place; and always be ready for combat."

"Yes, ma'am," Sonia answered softly.

As the pair of them continued carefully down the road, from the cover of the woods, the fleet-of-foot hunter nodded his understanding as well.

* * *

><p>Author's Notes:<p>

It's been a while! Six months have gone by since the last update, apparently. My desire to write about anything other than the Horde party is pretty awful, and progress tends to lag when there's an Alliance or Forsaken chapter due. Next up is Forsaken, so we'll see how it goes.

Oh, I was in /Trade the other day and they were discussing male Dark Rangers. The consensus is that they don't exist. Well, this fic is far from perfect, so I think I leave Solara as he is. I've also grown fond of writing Skari's name as Ska'ri because it makes him less of an abomination on a role playing server; but it also means his birth name is Ska and this amuses me greatly.


	9. Chapter 9

**Spirit of the Locket**

* * *

><p>The sun had gone and come again by the time the Forsaken chopper landed at the base camp in Winterspring. The ominous clicking of the machine's blades and the billowing black smoke from its engine broadcasted its great effort to make it over the mountains. Pieces of furbolg magic still clung to the craft, breaking down its metal plating, anguishing its driver even as he kicked the jammed door off its hinges and stumbled out into the blackened snow. His vulture, caged near the rear of the machine, made a racket as the hunter moved away alone.<p>

It is not too uncommon to see a Forsaken solider limp or sway, even when he is at his best. For this reason, it was difficult to discern just how grievous the soldier's injuries were as he staggered past his leery comrades. Surely, though, the sucking wounds and tears in his neck and chest were cause for concern; and in the case that concern lacked for the undead horde scattered like cannon fodder across Winterspring, it would suffice to say he wouldn't be returning to battle with his arm hanging by so few tendons, and so much of his inside turned out into the air.

The further he got into the camp, the easier it was to see that his condition was of little consequence, and there were bigger things at hand. Even when his long legs gave out under him, perhaps due to lack of blood or whatever arcane ichor kept his corpse glued together, the Forsaken around him did not pause in their work. As he clambered toward the large tent in the center of the camp, the masses continued sorting materials and munitions into cargo boxes.

One of the guards called into the tent. Eustace appeared in the threshold long before the hunter would finally drag himself there with the remnants of his hands. At the edge of camp, the aircraft wound up until, suddenly, the engine exploded and a fiery draft washed over the camp; and the hunter fell facedown in the foot traffic slop.

"Alliance," the hunter growled with more fluid than air in his throat. "Emerald Sanctuary. The locket." This was as much as he could say before his decaying body was overwhelmed by meaty sputtering and violent wracking.

A well dressed priest of the Forgotten Shadow stepped forward, waiting to be addressed. Eustace made a dismissive gesture and turned on his heel. He went, without further thought for his messenger, to the raised platform, which looked a little too much like gallows, near to his tent.

"Centurion," he called to the closest officer. A rat-haired woman acknowledged him with a salute. "Felwood awaits."

"I advise sending them by air, sir," spoke a smoky, shadowy figure on the periphery of the group. Its curled hand waved over the maps laid out on the podium standing in the middle of the gathered soldiers. "The Timbermaw have closed ranks on the ground, and the Wintersaber Trainers are backing them."

Eustace gave a displeased nod of approval. The centurion twirled and howled to the footmen scurrying below, "armor the gryphons!"


	10. Chapter 10

**Spirit of the Locket**

* * *

><p>Leaves of violet, red, and vibrant green broke from their branches in a wind that whistled. As quickly as they fell, they were crushed beneath the webbed paws of panting wyverns.<p>

Everfierce stuffed the appropriate amount of coin in the pouch hanging from the saddle of the wyvern she'd hired. Then, she turned to address the others, and found herself frowning at the echelon of flattened earth the party left in its wake. "Loose them here. Any further north and we'll hit Spintertree."

Vo'jau complied, pulling her belongings from the back of the second wyvern. Ska'ri dismounted the third and smoothed his once-white robes.

"_Owachi_," Everfierce told the wyverns as they shook out their manes and rattled their armor.

In Taur-ahe that was bass and growled like tumbling rocks, the lead wyvern brusquely replied, "_what makes Shu-Halo cross the Brackenwall?—I do not want thanks for this._" The other two cackled their assent. All three took off in a gallop that, several yards off, let them leap into the air. Their powerful wings took them in in a spiral and out of the clearing, leaving Everfierce, Vo'jau, and Ska'ri on their own in the Nightsong woods.

"Aerial scouts from Orgrimmar, the Warsong camps, Splintertree," Everfierce began, watching the empty sky. "Sentinels from Silverwind, Forestsong, Astranaar, and Raynewood. Demons from the canyon to the east, satyr settlements to the north, and Felwood beyond. Various tribes of crazed furbolg. Enormous spiders, wolves, bears, bog beasts." Coming to the end of the list, the tauren surveyed her traveling companions. No one expressed surprise that their adversity had so many names, but their faces were worn thin by the lam. Everfierce finished, "Forsaken riders from the Barrens and from an undetermined origin in the north. From here on, if it moves, it's hostile." She scraped her weapon's sling from her new chest plate, fashioned of crude materials provided by the Brackenwall Village orges, and pulled the Grimtotem axe into her grip. In doing so, the leather caught on the locket's chain, tugged it loose, and sent it flying.

The shaman tore after the glinting trinket in a heartbeat. She collapsed on her knees in the tangles of long grass and clover and began combing the greenery with her splayed fingers. Ska'ri moved more slowly, shoving Everfierce aside when his path intersected with where she stood, exasperated. "Not so reliable after all," he uttered on his way. "Maybe we no more trust de li'l chain to de metal porterhouse." He paused before crossing into the invisible circle of the search area to cast a summoning spell.

The warlock pulled an imp from the nether to help them search; and maybe due to the its familiarity with ground level and wrestling with shrubbery, it was the demon that found the locket. Vo'jau was inches away and watched with wary as the minion scampered back to its master and dropped the necklace into Ska'ri's open hand. With dark, daring eyes, he returned Vo'jau's stare.

"Leave it to the shaman to carry," Everfierce grunted as she got up and out of the weeds.

"No," Vo'jau responded, reluctantly moving her eyes off the warlock. "Let 'im." It wasn't until they'd started moving, and Ska'ri had taken point by a few yards, that the shaman had a chance to explain herself to the warrior. "Ya know as well as I do what happens if we go be meetin' dat druid dat took Komodo." She gestured lightly toward their more vengeful companion and bowed her head, to keep her words to Everfierce quiet. "Stonetalon Peak will be burnt up. If him kill anyone of de Cenarion band, we be _dead_."

"Enivan won't stop him," Everfierce countered. "I felt no compulsion toward concord in Feralas. Had I not a level head and a fear for my life, I would have taken up arms against the druid when she was within swinging distance."

The creases in her tattooed brow were reply enough that Vo'jau was at a loss. They navigated fallen trees and thicket while they weighed their options in silence. It wasn't until they reached the river Falfarren that divided Ashenvale's Horde occupied east from the Alliance west that they had words again on the topic. "De tunnel," Vo'jau said sorrowfully. "I kin bring it down."

Everfierce purposefully avoided considering the implications of what would become of Komodo should they collapse the Talondeep Path. "If we go first, you could cave it in before he gets through."

The troll clicked her tongue, irritated with the weakness of her own desperate proposition. "An' we won't have a way ov geddin' back. Dey's no neutral outposts out dere to hire wings. We'd have to . . . " she groaned, wiping the sweat from her face, "go all de way t' de sea and . . . dey's jus' no way. Maybe he jus' bust t'rough it, anyway. Or he fly ova on dat bloody carpet."

"The collapse will buy us time, at least," Everfierce reassured her. "We'll have to have Komodo rescued before he makes it over the mountains. Whether he goes over or through, we'll have our way back."

"Ya be makin' it sound so easy," Vo'jau grumbled.

Ska'ri waited for them to catch up. The uneasy trio gathered at the edge of the valley below Silverwind Refuge and watched the posts and patterns of the patrolling sentinels. It quickly became clear that if they were going to get through, they'd either have to go north to the road or south, into Mystral lake.

Vo'jau suggested drearily, "put it t' a vote?"

"De lake," Ska'ri said, and rose from where they were knelt in the ferns, intent on going his own way. He made it about halfway upright before a solid thing against the back of his head stopped him. Judging by the sensation, it was a blade. He hovered in an awkward crouch for a moment before falling back to his knee, with his head pushed uncomfortably far toward his lap.

Kaldorei gibberish filled the warlock's ears, and the shaman's and the warrior's too as they were forced to bow forward in the leaf litter. Without ceremony, the pressure of the weapons went missing.

The first keen-eyed sentinel brought her moon glaive up, over her head, and spun it thrice in her nimble fingers before throwing her shoulder and swinging the blade down on her target. She missed by less than an inch, her aim compromised by the troll's sudden movement—his jerk to one side, the way he kicked out his long legs and threw her off her feet.

Everfierce reacted accordingly, but in her own way. When the second elf's blade swung, just a moment after the first elf's, she trusted her cobalt pauldron to take the blow without shattering. As the metals skated against each other, the tauren whirled around and caught the elf's arm. She might have broken it had her hand not been stayed by gobs of clay shooting up from the ground to encase the glaive.

The third elf was tearing her blade from the dirt, where it had embedded itself when Vo'jau rolled out of its path. The shaman was casting earth magic from her barely safe spot a little ways away, and screaming, "don' hurt dem!"

Ska'ri paused with the butt of his staff on the first elf's throat, his heel on her chest. The haze of combat lifted for just an instant, and he remembered he was wearing the locket.

Their first fears faded upon realizing, one by one, that so far they were not dead. Tripping up their almost-executers hadn't broken their deal with Enivan. This relief evanesced when the Horde trio came to understand that they could not win this battle.

Everfierce's opponent let out a whooping yell, and across the valley bells pealed at the night elfin refuge. The elf was tossed aside in the next second, but the damage was done. Vo'jau crashed into the tauren, hollering along the way something like, "move it!" The shaman dropped a totem at the warrior's hooves, and it pulsed with energy that slowed the elves.

In only a handful of seconds, they were well on their way to the lakeshore where waited the glowing eyes of bog beasts and murky waters of grasping vines. Between labored breaths and panicked glances over their shoulders, they gradually recognized their lack of a warlock. Everfierce immediately turned to double back, but Vo'jau caught her arm.

"Let it lie!" The troll woman panted, pulling at the tauren to continue toward the lake. In preparation, she cast spells of water walking ability over the both of them with a couple of sharp hand gestures.

"He has the locket!" Everfierce roared, jerking her arm away from the troll. "What are we to do if he is captured, if he dies!? You go!" Even on a tauren's kind face, a scowl like the one Everfierce wore now could put darkness into any heart. "Go on through the tunnel. Save the girl. I'll go back alone."

"No," Vo'jau pled, her lips curling scornfully under her tusks. "I kyannot be doin' dis alone. He kyan. He said 'imself, he kin fly it up t' de glade. No two-bit scouts are gonna stop 'im."

"He'll fly to Komodo first!"

"He won't! We don' have de locket, we have t' go t' her! He'll trust dis t' us, an' he'll do him part! What does any ov it madda, if de locket never reach de glade?"

They squared off like this, staring each other down, leaving their arguments to outlast each other in the lull where they caught their breaths.

The lopsided circle of Everfierce's horns, the damaged one having split and partially sloughed off twelve hours ago, cut rays of sunlight as she shook her head. "You want me to gamble everything on the chance a _warlock _will make a rational decision." She bit each word as they left her mouth, not questioning their accuracy, only judging their terrible taste. "He, who at some point in his life, decided it was acceptable to consort with demons. To wield their fel magic. To let them into his body, his mind! How is madness like this compatible with a merry end? Can you see it, shaman? Can you see us a year from now, smoking in the longhouse on the Spirit Rise, laughing at all of this?"

"No," Vo'jau slowly said, and in doing so hollowed out the warrior's spirit. The troll repeated, "no, I don' see dis. I see not'in' but de wide dark ov de unknown. But I tell ya what I _have seen_. I seen a troll who ha'n't cross us. Even when he coulda, when him heart was sick fo' dat girl's capture. He may be a _warlock_, but he a _Darkspear _first. A troll ov de Horde. Thrall's Horde. Cairne's Horde."

They stood in silence for several seconds. The sounds of the forest crept in on them: the far away cracking of trees, the ringing of alarm bells, the lapping of the lake.

Then, there was Everfierce's rumbling voice. "That Horde is dead."

A need to move forced the tauren to acquiesce. Her discontent was clear in the thunder of her footfalls as she proceeded toward the lake. In her mind, she told herself, if the worst case scenario came to be, they'd need Komodo's help to take back the locket from the night elves.

As Everfierce moved by her, Vo'jau let go of a breath she'd been holding she knew not how long, and on it murmured the words, "not yet."

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

I started writing this around the start of the Cataclysm, and it's only occurred to me recently that Thrall's Horde still exists. In the Dominance Offensive quest line in Krasarang Wilds, Vol'jin corresponds with you via mail. Among other things (I won't spoil), he tells you to keep an eye on Garrosh. I know I'm kind of breaking the fourth wall here, but when I thought about how there were many other members of the Horde participating in this quest line, I felt a sense of belonging that I hadn't in a long time. Anyway, I imagine the persecuted peoples of the Horde (read: non-orcs) first felt they had to fight for _their _Horde a long time ago.


	11. Chapter 11

**Spirit of the Locket**

* * *

><p>Ska'ri tumbled off the elf he had pinned as another took a swing at his head. For a moment, it was impossible to tell where the sheen of the blade stopped and where began the aged white of the troll's hair. The pastel potpourri of Ashenvale's floor caught him and found his dreadlocks just a whisper shorter than their original waist length.<p>

It was all he could do, before he would be set upon by the three elves (and soon their fellows), to conjure from thin air his flying carpet. He bid it to _go_ without unrolling it, and so it _went_ like a firecracker at a bad angle, dragging him at a raptor's gallop through switches and brambles. The elves disappeared in the blur of the fast retreating woods—by distance or by shadowmelding, Ska'ri didn't know. He _did _know that he would have to halt the carpet soon or the pointy bits of Nightsong would tear him to shreds. He _did _stop—it was just a coincidence he steeled his nerves to do so at the precise moment an unearthed root caught his staff. The curled rug ripped out of his hand and fell out of the air as the warlock slammed into the ground.

Rich, black forest soil blackened his teeth, his tusks, his mouth. Leaves stuck to his palms as he pushed himself to site upright. He was too exhausted from the sprint out of death's clutches to wrestle the vines and branches from his filthy robe. It was enough to be able to put one foot in front of the other until he could turn his shoulder down and collapse on his back on the unfolded carpet.

Ashenvale was still for a moment. There lacked the sound of birds or the clang of enemy armor. Wiry arms of ancient trees wove the canopy, their craft perfect in its imperfection—the empty patches between trees dappling the forest floor in beautiful, colored light. Against his racing heart, Ska'ri felt the weight of the locket as if the chain were ten times its size, and then he came to know that he was alone.

Had the elves pressed the chase, he may have blown them all to hell. All of them. Him. The scheming little shaman, the courageous Tauren, and poor, poor Komodo. Let it be over. Let them not suffer this quest one day more. The locket's ultimatum was the only possible conclusion to lives lived under the point of a blade. Do and do and do or die. Then die.

He just needed to lie here a while.

The locket dangled off the bloodied curve of his thumb. In the absence of any living thing, he found himself talking, anyway. "Jus' you an' me," he said, his voice like smoke; his eyes, water. "Y' not come out now." It an observation more than a suggestion, but like an incantation it summoned memories of the spirit's prior corporeal moments. "D'ose girls…"

The front end of the carpet came up and put the troll on his feet. He moved with a limp across the forest floor, and leaned slowly to take his staff from where it had stuck. Smearing the dirt sticking to his mouth on the back of his arm, Ska'ri stepped aboard the flat carpet. "Y' t'ink I forgive 'em for taking her? Y' t'ink I ever?" Fel armor lit the edges of his robes aflame for a moment. With his two fingers, he scraped half-dried blood from his collar. The dark flakes burnt in green fire on his fingertips and under his nails; and the carpet lifted up off the ground. "When dis is over, it's not over."

Ashenvale ran away under foot.

What was left of his strength brought him across the border into Felwood. The carpet disintegrated at the choke point, where the road was most narrow, between the Emerald Sanctuary and Deadwood Village. There, in the center of the deserted road, stood a little human. She was familiar in the worst way.

"We finally meet," Sonia said. Stoic was almost the right word for her, but Ska'ri could smell the fear she was trying so hard to hide. "I hope you can understand me. I don't speak much Orcish."

The woods were so still it hurt. Ska'ri suspected she was distracting him. He could almost feel the inevitable blade in his back, but his ears told him there was nothing behind him. His eyes told him there was nothing else around him, but night was falling. He was not so sure the darkness was his ally. Licks of acid rain were sizzling up through the diseased soil, making his skin crawl, making his mind doubt what his body felt.

Neither of them moved. The girl spoke again. "I just want to talk."

He had no interest in talking, so he bluffed, double blind. "Le' me pass an' y' don' die."

Apparently, threats didn't offend Enivan; and Ska'ri's Common wasn't so awful. Sonia responded with a pensive, appreciative smile. The tension of the encounter then smothered the expression. "The woman that was with you, she's alright. But she's certain your group won't trade the locket for her."

The grinding of his teeth was a hollow noise in the roof of his mouth. "Did she tell you t' wait here?"

Sonia didn't have an answer. Not one she wanted to give. In the end, she spared him no grief. She could see that. The troll's breathing was more ragged by the second, and Sonia was beginning to really worry.

"The others don't understand," she told him, rambling in a way. "Their craft belongs to them. It's different for a warlock. We belong to our craft. I know what it's like not to have a choice."

She just wanted to keep him talking, keep him still. His sense of reason told him so.

But, oh, he saw in her effort to control him that he hardly had control of himself. He wanted to feed her his rage. He wanted to watch her die. "I kyan't hurt you," he admitted. "I don't have a choice. Not now. But soon, I git dat choice back. And I come _find _you."

If he had only sought to disturb her, he could have claimed his victory. Sonia peered at the crooked, old troll for a hint about the cryptic things he spoke. She thought he was lying, of course; because if she'd truly believed him, he'd be a smoldering crater. "Who is your master?"

Ska'ri's Zandali was a slush of half-words in his locked jaws. "… what would you do _Enivan_ how fast could an old ghost be what would it do to _you _to kill me …"

Sonia struggled to hold her feet in place. It was a battle to keep her voice from quavering. "Where are your companions?" But there was an obvious lack of stability in her slowly raised arm. Through her shaking, splayed fingers, she watched the troll vehemently mutter. She saw his elbow bend, his wrist turn. _Let's not fight_, she tried to say, but the words wouldn't come. The troll's pointed fingers curled at his throat, and there was a tiny flash in the sucking darkness of the cursed woods. A metallic chain. _The locket!_

Ska'ri closed his hand around the trinket with a strength that wanted to crush it. And blood filled his mouth. The trees on either side of him burst into flames, sending arcs of white hot sparks spraying over the road. On the far end of a tunnel of whirling light and fire, Sonia stood with her hand closed into a choking fist.

Agony split from him head to toe. Ska'ri leaned hard on his staff, his downcast face spilling blood. The light of the world receded.

_Tap, tap, tap._ The sound of the little human's heels on the cobblestone broadcasted her bravery. Her opponent was a smoking wreck now, hardly anything to fear. And yet… she stopped just shy of contact distance. The air changed. Their shared space grew colder. It made little sense as the trees continued to drip embers in the dead grass. Her frayed skirts moved, but there was no wind; and a green radiance began building in the troll's hand, but this… this wasn't felfire.

Ribbons of energy burst from the locket. Like the swing of a sword, a tendril cut through the Alliance warlock. With her face twisted in pain, a word, like a prayer, trickled from Sonia's lips. "_Impossible_." She vanished by teleport in the next second.

Enivan's power snaked around Ska'ri's slumped shoulders and burned away the veil of near-death. The locket did little more than that. Its energy snapped and cracked in the troll's ears, conveying a thought that took a moment to interpret. Not _go_ nor _hurry_, but instead it said something more specific. It was a reason, a warning, a last chance. _SHADOW_.

Only half cognizant, Ska'ri slid his thumb through the lines of blood spiraling along his right tusk. Black smoke followed the mark he made in the air with his thumb. There. A shadow ward.

The shreds of the locket's power coalesced within the protection of the ward. Then, there was an explosion—in every meaning of the word. The locket ripped open and great wings reached through the aperture. The cobbled road shot away into the dark woods at the same moment, and the fel mists rent like the broken belly of a slaughtered boar. Suddenly, they were immersed in a sea filled with billions of stars. Oh, flight!

Below, through the black tangles of dying trees, the fel green heart of the woods pulsed in time to the explosions cutting a pox into the Emerald Sanctuary grounds. War. This was war, now. The Horde Forsaken and the Alliance Cenarion agents clashed in the pit while the Emerald Circle tauren lost heart. There was no telling from this height which force was winning.

Retreat was another story.

Over Deadwood Village, Bengal turned her wings and saw what couldn't be. The brilliant flare of a green, lucent storm crow carried the Horde troll warlock north.

The druid dropped out of the sky.

She landed like a stone, if a stone had whiskers. There was no telling her black body from the night in the woods. All she was could be contained in winded breathing and wide eyes, and yet a clatter of bending forest found her. Reflexively, she thrust out her paws to grapple with the stranger, but by the light of the felfiery woods she recognized Sonia and pulled back her attack.

The little human was disheveled with her robes hanging off her shoulders, and the shift beneath was wrinkled and awkwardly gathered. She didn't have the mind to pause and consider the fact that her team leader had nearly unbuttoned her body.

"It ran me through!" Sonia shrieked, clutching the fabric bunched below her breast. "That thing, it has power! The troll—it was over. I saw he had it and it was over, he was on the ground. But it has a force of its own! Is it sentient, Bengal? Is it acting against us? I nearly had it in my hand, but then!" With a turned fist, she made a motion of jabbing with an invisible knife. In a rush, she flattened her hand to her middle. "The rogue from before—the bruises—they're gone!"

Bengal's panther nose grazed the backs of Sonia's fingers, and then she pulled away. She shifted into elfin shape just long enough to remark, "the locket and the warlock go now into Winterspring. By whose will, I do not know. It does not matter. Our task does not change. Our tactics do. The Forsaken hold the old Gold Road. The Sanctuary needs backup. We need the rest of our team."


	12. Chapter 12

Eyes dry, arms heavy, Vo'jau let go of the thought of sleep as she deliberately skidded down a muddy embankment. Mushrooms crumbled against her arm as she caught a desiccated tree trunk to keep from going too far. Though straying too close to the logging camp was the moment's heaviest concern, Everfierce's focus was on the night sky.

Vo'jau shot her companion a look while waiting for her to catch up. "Wild wyverns," Everfierce explained, gesturing to a vacant ridge in the west.

"Left de ropes at home," Vo'jau pretended. Everfierce didn't stop to humor the idea.

"A crossbow would serve us better. If they catch wind of us before we're in place, their alarm calls will ruin our plan."

The troll scoffed as she picked her way over a deteriorating log. "Everfierce, I am a _shaman_. I kin throw _lightning_."

Unimpressed, the warrior countered, "lightning is loud."

* * *

><p>"Our orders are to stay here," Ursula said, effectively terminating whatever shifty business was occurring between Shy and the Stonetalon Peak flight master. If the half-elf's face was anything to go by, he was chilled by being caught. He immediately left the flight master's company.<p>

"No, we have _no_ orders." Had he been able to make a swift exit, Shy would have been ten yards ahead of the short-legged gnome already. Unfortunately, any effort in that vein was hindered by the razor sharp pain in his side and chest. The bandages had come off, thanks to the local healer, and he could wear his mended cuirass again—but it hugged his body in the worst ways. "Little good we'll do sitting around here while the undead are always gaining ground."

"Listen up, pup," Ursula started, and Shy hitched in his stride. He drew offense from the fact that she couldn't have had more than twenty years on him, but he couldn't get a word in edgewise about it. "Right now, the boss lady knows where we are. If you buzz off, you're AWOL. So we're gonna _stay put_ and _sit tight._"

Shy bit down on his tongue and found the strength of mind to be silent. He relented airily, making nothing of his internal battle, "of course."

"Good." Ursula held out her hand, pointing firmly toward the garden. The white marble columns stood out from the trees even in the dead of night. "Then, you take watch." There was a twitch of objection in his nose, but Shy parted in compliance and without further word.

With every day longer this mission dragged on, the more strongly Shy felt that _respect _was always going to be out of his reach. Looking inside of himself, he could find no good reason why this was so; but when he looked outside, it was easy to attribute every misgiving to his mixed blood. This was the thought in his head when he planted his feet squarely in the bluegrass a short distance from where Komodo hung in fetter. She, too, was a mongrel.

There was a canteen sitting on a smooth stone near to their captive. Woodenly, Shy swept it from its place and twisted off the cap. He crouched—and, wincing, regretted doing so immediately—to offer the drink to Komodo. While the water dribbled over the rim of its container and over the half-elf's fingers, the troll didn't lift her head. "Here," he spoke to her in halting Orcish. "Dying won't help your friends."

He waited, patiently, for several moments before giving up and setting the canteen aside. Only after he shuffled back and sat on his heels did Komodo stir. "Dyin' in silence, no. But if I could die loudly…" Her voice was soft as birds' down, weak like a child's but still sweet in the way it twisted in the balmy mountain breeze.

However she sounded, she was a troll, and to an elf, that was all that ever mattered. Shy considered what crimes Komodo might have committed against his kind, against the Alliance, even in her domestication. She was the Horde's equivalent to the Stormwind housewives that went in chatty gaggles to the well in the mornings, but Shy would never see it.

"We won't let you die," he told her as he moved his eyes to the perimeter of the outpost. In any other context, it would have been a reassuring thing to say, but Shy's manner was as tepid as the water sticking to his hands. "Not yet."

"I forgive you," she murmured, and she lowered her head. Shy, in turn, snapped back to her, squinting with confusion and suspicion.

She seemed to sleep, after that. Shy told himself that the troll woman was in no condition to attempt an escape; and then he stood, slipped into the shadows, and started heading away down the mountain.

* * *

><p>Sunrise made the climb more difficult for the Horde pair. The space between the trees changed from warm violet to pink and then blinding white. Everfierce ripped a branch from one of the thousands of conifers they passed by, but she couldn't get it to work as a visor with only one horn to hold it. Hand-shading their eyes made the going slower, and when the rocks warmed up their climb worsened all the more.<p>

A couple of hours past first light, they stole their first look at the elfin camp in the peak. Just the population was enough to elicit a groan from Vo'jau. Instantly, Everfierce's enormous palm landed on the back of the troll's head and pushed down reproachfully. Vo'jau shoved her away, hissing, "dryads an' grove keepers an' elves _an' _hippogryphs!"

"No sign of the druid or her party," Everfierce said. She scrutinized the camp for a while longer, through the lens of a spyglass, and then she shoved her arm forward in the dirt, pointing. "_Komodo_, though, there." At the end of the tauren's finger, there was a smear of dirty clothes and dark purple skin a little more than two hundred yards away.

The question, "alive?" tumbled over Vo'jau's tongue. It was clear, after a while, that neither of them could truly tell the answer. "Who knows if she got de power t' put up a shield." The shaman seemed to want reassurance or commiseration, but Everfierce had none to offer. The tauren just screwed up her face and snorted with unease. Vo'jau had to take that as her cue to get on with it.

Scraping herself up off the ground, Vo'jau backed off of Everfierce's position. She moved further along the ridge on which they were perched to overlook the glen in the peak. Keeping her profile low, the troll crawled along the rocks until she was satisfied with the distance between herself and the warrior; then, she twisted and jerked a phial from her belt. She double checked the etching in the glass and the consistency and color of the liquid within before uncorking the top. The risks made her hesitate, but it was only for a second. She sipped quickly and then put the potion away.

The shaman exhaled, blowing a bald crater in the red dust. Her eyelids clipped her eyes to crescents for a hearty few seconds, and then the world began melting and moving around her. The elementals of Stonetalon gradually came into focus.

Everfierce was unaffected by the shaman's alchemic transition. Although she had been raised to acknowledge nature and all of its facets, Everfierce could only see the sort of elementals that manifested in rage and fear. To her, it looked as if Vo'jau had just begun muttering in Zandali to herself. The warrior paid her a brief glance, being unnerved but confident in the plan, before clambering back from the edge of the ridge.

As Everfierce took her hooves from the danger zone, the first fracture appeared in the rock, slithering out from the circle of Vo'jau's hands. Another break in the rock shot out in the opposite direction. The mountain groaned and clouds of sediment began to breathe up out of the fault lines. The shaman glanced in a rush, right and left, and unfolded upwards and onto her feet. Where she placed each foot, in her backpedaling, the rock broke and broke again. The web of fractures spread so far as to cause Everfierce to abandon her lookout place.

* * *

><p>It was thunder that woke Ursula, but there wasn't a storm waiting for her when she stumbled out onto the porch. An elf shoved passed her, and Ursula could only be glad that her recently healed leg held up under the punishment. As more elves spilled out into the gardens, the gnome turned her attention outward to her team's prisoner. The troll woman was there, but Shy was no where in sight.<p>

The ground shuddered underfoot. Darnassian shouting filled the air. Ursula rounded the corner of the building and was not at all prepared for the sight that was happening there. The flight master was helping to hoist a third elf, young by the looks of his face, onto one of the outpost's hippogryphs. Another hippogryph barreled on by Ursula at just that moment, apparently requiring a running take off to get out of the grass. There were a handful of druids, too, in their deer shape, rolling their heads to demonstrate the swing of their antlers to clearly inexperienced passengers. They bolted off in a mock-orderly fashion, and then there was a dryad at Ursula's side yelping about an evacuation, because the east mountainside was coming down.

The shift in the rock was obvious even from this far away, and that was without accounting for the dust clouds. The trees on the ridge were beginning to crack and fall, and the wildlife was in a flurry.

Ursula couldn't find it in herself to discount an avalanche as a coincidence. She waved off the dryad and sprinted for the crowd at the flight master's post. "Do we still have druids?" Her voice couldn't break through the din. She started slapping knees. "Call them back! We need the druids here!" Bit by bit, the elves started to take notice of her. "Mages, warlocks?" No, of course not. Not at an elfin outpost. "Bend the tree line and we can stifle the brunt of it!"

The flight master was not inspired, much to Ursula's chagrin. He countered, "the keepers are doing all they can, but they have told us to go!"

"I'm not leaving," the gnome growled—which was a feat in itself. "I'm here under the banner of the Cenarion Circle. My authority is sanctioned by Remulos and the Arch Druid Staghelm himself!" It didn't matter that she was exaggerating. She'd concern herself with evading a court martial later, when the sky wasn't falling. Her only real goal was to foil the evacuation and motivate the defense of the outpost. "Call back the druids!"

Another hippogryph tore off, only this one carried no wayward evacuees. Ursula could only hope it would return soon with aid.

* * *

><p>The face of the mountain crumbled. Vo'jau flattened herself against the wall of the cliff behind her, working to dislodge from her bag a stake and a mask crudely carved into coconut shell. Wrapping the two reagents together with vine while trying to pick up on Everfierce's whereabouts simultaneously was impossible. In a roar she accepted the loss, pulled the vine in a tight tie, and then cut the excess material in the curve of one tusk. Exhaling, she hurled her energy and power into the freshly constructed totem. The rock at her toes cracked and heaved itself, and took the shape of an earth elemental, and she rode it up in an explosion of red smoke and salt.<p>

Fleeing birds swept over the ridge at just the moment the floor dropped out from under Everfierce. Her hooves were tough and built to climb, but the rubble was a river and it wanted to carry her out and over the trees. She lost her footing and was instantly brushed in cuts, and within her first of a few hard landings she was pretty sure she'd broken her tail. She was given an ironic reprieve a beat later, missing the rocks entirely and tumbling clear off the ridge and into empty air. One hundred yards of a great lot of nothing unfurled between the tauren and the valley floor.

There was probably something she could do to keep gravity from shutting out her lights for good, but for the life of her, Everfierce couldn't think. Moreover, she couldn't see for the gust of wind and cold mist in her face. She shut her eyes, crunched up, waited the plummeting feeling in her stomach to stop—or for her body to hit the ground, whichever came first. The freefall lasted much longer than it was supposed to, especially considering the reverberation in the air of the mountain hitting the valley before her. When she finally got up the courage to open her eyes, Everfierce found herself inexplicably suspended in midair. Wildflowers and weeds shivered benignly an inch from her nose. It took only a second for the realization that she was _levitating_ to dawn on her, and then she flailed her feet to right herself as the voice tore out of her throat, "KOMODO!"

The little troll woman had her palms raised as far as they would go, even with her elbows chained to the archway behind her. The grass around her rolled in waves of golden light. Her shield shuddered as it was pelted with sediment. Her power nearly snapped when Vo'jau's elemental crash landed a short ways away.

The shaman rolled off her ride and into the glen in one smooth motion. She hit the ground running, and she skidded down next to Komodo with magic already rising in her fingertips.

"Y-you came—" Komodo began, but her cracked and bleeding lips could barely form the words. Vo'jau pressed her fingers against Komodo's mouth and summoned a deluge that would start to heal the wounds and the weathering.

"We geddin' de band back together." Vo'jau's hand dragged away as her attention turned to the chains. Her expression fell as she became aware that she had nothing to pick or break the locks. Snarling, she ripped a ceremonial dagger from her belt, raised it in both hands above her head, and stabbed down on the metal links.

The sound of wind warping and gravel bounding off the head of the Grimtotem axe informed Everfierce's position. Weapon raised, posture defensive, the warrior stared down a rearing dryad. "Back off!" Everfierce feinted forward and added to her warning in Taur-ahe, "as a Mistrunner, I would be grieved to aggress!" _As a slave of the locket, I and mine would perish, please—_

The dryad's spear swung down, and Everfierce jerked the neck of her axe up to block the blow. The butt of the spear kicked back next, and the enormous axe was too heavy to maneuver fast enough. Everfierce twisted in her dented armor and successfully caught the head of the spear in her weapon's curved blade. Howling, she disarmed the dryad and herself in one throw. Her opponent looked as surprised as Everfierce did.

The force of the avalanche, which was only half of what it could have been had not a number of druids flown in at the last moment, hit the camp. Windows were blown out and roofs were caved in, and the gardens disappeared beneath a veil of driven gravel. Vo'jau ducked her head behind the archway, and when Komodo's shield had nearly broken, the shaman's elemental gripped the pillar of the arch in one hand and bowed over the two trolls.

Everfierce thudded against a tree two yards away in the middle of the dust storm. She could do little more than shake the double vision off and claw at her straps for her shield before the dryad found her again. The dryad's sharp hooves clattered against the saronite surface, pounding at it until the tauren's arms began to weaken.

Vo'jau's dagger was doing nothing but cutting pits into the grass. She jabbed it through two links, rotated, and started twisting. The metal groaned and then the dagger cracked. Komodo's resigned sigh broke the shaman's heart. Vo'jau took Komodo's head in her arms, gently pulled her down to one side, and bid her earth elemental to smash its fist into the arch. The chain didn't break, but the pillar did.

The elemental crumbled under the weight of the stone, but Vo'jau paid it no mind. She lifted Komodo's bruised arms up over the root of the archway, and she was free! "Everfie—!"

Vo'jau's cerise pink eyes went wild and wide on meeting the perfect blue stare of a half-elf. Without ever seeing his face or hearing his name, she knew him instantly, intimately.

Shy frowned playfully. "You again?"

* * *

><p>"On the way to Mirkfallon, honestly," Shy explained with his eyes turned elsewhere. Ursula wasn't a pretty sight, being dust-covered and angry. "Then the birds," and here he made a motion of flight with two hands, "so I turned back." He dared to glance at his teammate, to see if he was making an impression. No, she didn't see his generosity. "You should be glad."<p>

"We were lucky. That's all," she huffed. "And the next time we're both laid up and waiting on orders? I'm breaking your ankles." Shy laughed her off quietly. Ursula let him, being more interested in walking along the gigantic fallen tree now lying in the gardens. They'd chained the prisoners to it by their necks.

Vo'jau and Everfierce knelt in the rubble, the rags of their underclothes dusted like the whole of the camp. It was made certain that they were not carrying the locket. Ursula stopped in front of Komodo, and stooped and tied a gag around her head to keep her from whispering little prayers.

"Here's what we're going to do," the gnome said, glancing across the Horde trio to read the effect the words had in Common. She decided to switch to Orcish. "Keeping captives is labor intensive. Keeping you alive. Keeping you tied down. Keeping you powerless. Fact is, we only need one living body to make a bargaining chip." With a tiny finger movement, Ursula activated the mechanism on her wrist and a concealed knife shot forward into her grip. With the point of the blade, she encouraged Komodo to lift her chin. "I'll let you decide." When she jerked the blade back, only a small cut was made.

Ursula turned to Shy, idly weaving her knife through her fingers. "Are there Orcish words for numbers, or do they work off of grunts?" Shy pressed his lips in a mildly amused half-smile; so, Ursula went on in Common, "ten, nine, eight…"

The count was interrupted by the dry growl of crumbling earth. The typical orbit of rotating clay rose from the debris of the avalanche and swirled around the bloodied Komodo. The cast fit the twist of the shaman's wrists, and likewise the witch-doctor-in-training flicked her fingers and threw shields of light around her companions. Ursula squinted, appraising the threat; and after a moment the gnome tossed her knife. The blade lit, sparked against the magic, and was kicked back.

"That's alright," Ursula said, sighing. She stepped back, drew her left-hand dagger from its right-side hilt, and flipped the blade experimentally in her hand. In one breath she said and lunged, "we've got all the time in the _world!_" And she sliced through the magic shell like it was made of water. It broke like a balloon, dribbling into little pools of light around where Komodo was knelt. Going by the way she jerked, the troll woman felt the impact in some other, real way. In the time it took to snap two fingers, Ursula sunk her blade into what would have been skin if not for an intercepting gobbet of earth, and Komodo conjured another shield.

Ursula yanked her hand back through the light, losing her dagger in the process. She glanced grimly over her shoulder at Shy. He needed no other prompt.

It felt a bit theatrical, using smoke bombs on chained prisoners, in front of the kaldorei host of Stonetalon Peak, and after such a long period of inaction. Shy did it anyway and vanished from all eyes, reappearing exactly when he desired, standing behind Everfierce's right shoulder in the middle of a short, downward swing. The pommel of his sword cracked the magic, caused it to splinter, but it took another strike to break it.

Komodo mended the spell only by half before being interrupted by the gnome again, in a new assault that brought Ursula's second dagger far too close to the troll's face. It was a wonder how Komodo kept her concentration, kept her shield from being punctured, even as Everfierce moaned like death and the scent of her blood filled the glen.

Vo'jau balled her fists, pinched her palms with her fingernails, and bid the air to slow and cool. Condensation swirled over the tauren's tipping head and burbling neck, and rain fell where it had no reason. The spray of the warrior's blood relented. It was a strange thing to have a wound close around the weapon that made it in the first place, but it wasn't a first for Everfierce. She shook off the itch with her own sort of violence, clipping Shy's hand with the horn he'd tried not to get too near. The half-elf pulled back on the sword, reclaimed his weapon and rent the tauren's grey hide once more. It healed just the same.

Komodo's power gave out at just that moment, under the force of Ursula's attack, and Vo'jau swung her will _that _way, catching the wayward blade again with the earth shield. The scene developed a desperate kind of absurdity. The Horde trio was equal parts supported by luck and doomed by the inevitability of it running out. By name, the science of it could be called mana.

Everfierce threw her shoulders back in a fit of rage. The enormous log they were all tether to jumped two inches and moved no more than that. Her chain remained in tact; honestly, she was probably more victorious in fracturing the vertebrae of her own spine in the attempt. Vo'jau fixed it, if it could be called that, while she was coming to terms with the idea that her role as prevailing rescuer was warping into that of the sole survivor. Eventually, her power was going to run dry, her companions were going to die, and the Alliance was going to use her to keep Ska'ri out of the Moonglade.

If a miracle was going to save them, none of them thought it would take the shape of a black panther falling from the sky.

The log shook with the druid's hard landing. The blood-curdling snarl in the cat's throat transformed as the elf did, and Bengal commanded, "stand _down!_"

Shy slipped away like a serpent. Ursula pulled her hand back mid-blow.

Everfierce collapsed, her one horn tangled in her short chain. Komodo bowed into the grass, spent. Vo'jau held herself up on her hands and glowered, because she didn't know—didn't want to believe it was even _possible_ that Ska'ri had failed.

Rhysiart came down into the glen thereafter, and Sonia slid from his saddle and chose to stay back.

Like this, they looked like chess pieces standing in check.

Bengal dismounted the log, turned her head to survey the debris field. She wasn't concerned with where exactly her team members were when she started speaking to them, as well as the elves of Stonetalon Peak, in Common. "The Emerald Sanctuary is under siege by Horde Forsaken. Flight master, send soldiers into Felwood and a messenger to Darnassus. We have no reason to suspect the tauren of the Emerald Circle of treachery, so only take them as prisoners."

Ursula was just getting around to sheathing her blade. She didn't seem to trust what she was hearing. "They're openly aggressing against a druid circle? Is Garrosh that keen on destroying the Horde's tie with Thunderbluff?"

"Not our concern." Bengal's silver eyes were drawn to the chained prisoners. She held open her hand, expecting someone to come by and give her keys or bolt cutters. "We'll need two more hippogryphs. The three Horde are coming with us."

Ursula furrowed her brow and said nothing as one of the elves stepped forward with a ring of keys. Shy, on the other hand, appeared quietly beside Sonia and tucked his chin inquisitively.

"You remember when they told us this was a search and retrieve mission?" Sonia's fingers absently roamed the fur hem of her robe where it was buttoned beneath her breast. A moment late, she let out a deep breath, and her tear flashing eyes rose to Shy's face. "They lied."

The wheels were turning in Ursula's head. She opened her mouth to speak here and there but couldn't decide where exactly lay the line she shouldn't cross. As elves linked chains to hippogryphs and began binding the prisoners' wrists, Ursula risked remarking, "transporting prisoners by air… Something tells me we're not headed to Stormwind."

"Starfall," Bengal said. It was the place where their crusade had begun.

They were going to Winterspring, where waited the knight in the north.

Vo'jau didn't struggle as her shoulders were wrenched and her arms were drawn tightly behind her back. She glanced, trying and failing to mask her anxiety, toward the approaching hippogryphs, and toward Komodo where she wobbled weakly on the end of a chain.

Everfierce was not allowed to stand straight. The elves swung chains over her back and over her neck, around her horn, and kept her curled, unable to move freely in any sense, and off-balance. She was led limping and lumbering to the last hippogryph on the line and hooked to it. From around the curve of her arm, she peered at Vo'jau. If in a look she could ask anything, she asked, _what now?_

_Faith_, the shaman mouthed, wild-eyed and unready for the flight and the future.

* * *

><p>Author's Notes: Things have been crazy for a while around here. I don't even wanna look at when the last chapter of this was published. Probably ages ago. I've had most of this chapter done for a while now, but it took me forever to figure out how the last scene here ended.<p>

The next few chapters are what I've been wanting to write basically since the start of this story. Hopefully I can do it and post it with some semblance of speed this time.


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